THE  CHUR 
TO  BE  SAVED 


ERNEST  FREMONT  TITTLI 


W3M\\ 


m&Wti 


H  lit 


lilirl 


P|M 


l!li»i 


iMP&M 


»8 


falsUil 


ir 


BR  125 

.T4 

\ 

Tittle, 

Ernest 

Fremont , 

1885 

-1949. 

What  must  the 

church 

do 

to 

be  s  aved? 

z^1 CA 

P   SEP  7   1939 

fc&e  iWenbenWl  Itecturesf,  &txtf)  &er'«%ftgn|n>L  §t^ 
JMfotreb  at  ©eJJauto  ®mbersttp  ^a»-'1     — ~  — ' 


What  Must  the  Church 
Do  to  Be  Saved? 

And  Other  Discussions 


BY 
ERNEST  FREMONT  TITTLE 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
ERNEST  FREMONT  TITTLE 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


First  Edition  Printed  April,  1921 
Reprinted  September,  1921 


TO 

G.  M.  T. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Foreword 7 

I.  What   Must   the  Church   Do   to   Be 
Saved? 11 

II.  The  Changing  Conception  of  God.  ...  38 

III.  Sin 63 

IV.  Salvation 83 

V.  Jesus  Christ  the  Hope  of  the  World.  .  107 

VI.  Christianity  and  Life 137 


FOREWORD 

From  the  title  to  the  last  paragraph  this 
little  book  is  a  challenge.  It  stimulates  hon- 
est thinking  upon  the  great  facts  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  In  spirit  and  in  method  it  admir- 
ably illustrates  the  dictum  of  John  Wesley, 
"Think  and  let  think.' '  The  pain  and  peril 
of  our  time  is  not  that  great  masses  of  people 
think  and  feel  differently  from  the  orthodox 
few,  but  because  they  do  not  really  think  and 
feel  at  all.  Some  of  the  writer's  statements 
will  disturb  hereditary  religious  notions.  But 
there  is  on  every  page  a  ringing  appeal  for 
reality  in  faith,  for  intellectual  honesty,  and 
for  the  exaltation  of  "the  Strong  Son  of 
God"  in  every  kingdom  of  the  world.  The 
author  faces  fearlessly  the  doubts  of  this  cha- 
otic time.  He  so  interprets  the  basal  teach- 
ings of  Christianity  that  they  become  the 
more  human  in  their  appeal  and  divine  in 
their  compulsion. 

Multitudes  of  the  plain  people  count  them- 
selves outside  the  evangelical  church  because 
they  no  longer  hear  in  their  own  tongue  a  sure 
word  of  life.    In  these  lectures  Doctor  Tittle 


FOEEWOED 

has  restated  in  the  language  of  present  life 
some  of  the  great  truths  of  religious  belief. 
To  present  the  unchanging  religion  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  the  ever-changing  forms  of  human 
thinking  is  a  splendid  service. 

The  Mendenhall  Lectures  of  De  Pauw  Uni- 
versity, to  which  this  series  of  addresses  be- 
longs, was  founded  by  the  Eev.  Marmaduke 
H.  Mendenhall,  D.D.,  of  the  North  Indiana 
Conference  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church.  The  object  of  the  donor  was  "to 
found  a  perpetual  lectureship  on  the  evidences 
of  the  divine  origin  of  Christianity  and  the 
inspiration  and  authority  of  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures. The  lecturers  must  be  persons  of  high 
and  wide  repute,  of  broad  and  varied  scholar- 
ship, who  firmly  adhere  to  the  evangelical  sys- 
tem of  Christian  faith.  The  selection  of  lec- 
turers may  be  made  from  the  world  of  Chris- 
tian scholarship,  without  regard  to  denomina- 
tional divisions.  Each  course  of  lectures  is 
to  be  published  in  book  form  by  an  eminent 
publishing  house  and  sold  at  cost  to  the  Fac- 
ulty and  students  of  the  University. ' ' 

Lectures  previously  published : 

1913,  The  Bible  and  Life,  Edwin  Holt 
Hughes. 

1914,  The  Literary  Primacy  of  the  Bible, 
George  Peck  Eckman. 

8 


FOREWORD 

1917,  Understanding  the  Scriptures,  Fran- 
cis John  McConnell. 

1918,  Religion  and  War,  William  Herbert 
Perry  Faunce. 

1919,  Some  Aspects  of  International  Chris- 
tianity, John  Kelman. 

George  R.  Grose, 
President  De  Pauw  University. 


CHAPTER  I 

WHAT   MUST   THE    CHURCH   DO   TO 
BE  SAVED? 

The  question  with  which  this  chapter  is 
concerned  is  not,  "What  must  the  church  do 
to  live?  The  church  is  not  going  to  die.  It 
has  too  much  momentum  behind  it  to  come  to 
a  dead  stop.  It  is  too  firmly  supported  by  the 
affections  and  investments  of  millions  of  peo- 
ple to  fall.  But  it  would  be  possible  for  the 
church  to  remain  alive  yet  not  powerfully 
alive.  It  would  be  possible  for  the  church  to 
keep  on  talking  without  saying  anything  that 
greatly  needs  to  be  said,  and  to  keep  on  turn- 
ing the  wheels  of  its  machinery  without  bring- 
ing any  needed  thing  to  pass.  And,  surely,  it 
must  be  a  matter  of  grave  concern  to  ecclesi- 
astical leaders  that  the  common  people  who 
heard  Jesus  gladly  are  not  darkening  the  door 
of  the  modern  church.  Indeed,  church  at- 
tendance upon  the  part  of  all  classes  is  unde- 
niably on  the  decline,  and  the  question  with 
which  we  are  now  concerned  is,  What  must 
the  church  do  to  be  saved  from  inefficiency, 
none  the  less  tragic  because  it  is  solemn  and 

11 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

stately,  and  to  play  her  rightful  part  in  the 
reshaping  of  the  world?  This  is  a  big  ques- 
tion, and  the  author  of  these  pages  is  under 
no  illusion  as  to  his  own  ability  to  answer  it 
fully;  but  he  ventures  to  give  frank  expres- 
sion to  his  deepest  convictions  in  the  hope 
that  at  least  some  true  and  helpful  word  may 
be  said. 


If  the  church  is  to  play  any  large  and  vital 
part  in  the  building  of  a  better  civilization, 
she  must  clothe  her  message  in  the  living  lan- 
guage of  the  present  time  and  no  longer  con- 
ceal it  in  the  antiquated  garb  of  a  former  day. 
There  is  value,  no  doubt,  in  historic  continu- 
ity, but  only  in  a  continuity  of  the  Christian 
spirit  and  the  Christian  purpose,  not,  surely, 
in  any  merely  mechanical  continuity  of  ter- 
minology. What  really  matters  is  not  that 
we  should  say  what  prophets  said,  but  that 
we  should  see  as  prophets  saw.  What  is  vi- 
tally important  is  not  that  we  should  employ 
the  phraseology  which  saints  and  martyrs 
used,  but  that  we  too  should  dare  to  climb  the 
steep  ascent  to  heaven  through  peril,  toil,  and 
pain.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  petrified  reli- 
gious vocabulary  may  stand  in  the  way  of  a 
genuine  religious  passion.  The  continuity  of 
12 


TO  BE  SAVED  f 

the  Christian  purpose  may  actually  be  hin- 
dered by  the  artificial  dam  of  a  meaningless 
terminology.  Unless  one  can  stir  the  hearts 
of  men  his  preaching  is  in  vain.  How  can  one 
hope  to  stir  the  hearts  of  men  with  a  vocabu- 
lary which  to  contemporaneous  ears  sounds 
fanciful  and  strange  1 

Does  not  the  vocabulary  of  modern  psychol- 
ogy provide  a  far  surer  instrument  for 
reaching  the  deep  springs  of  human  emotion 
than  does  the  now  almost  alien  language  of 
mediaeval  theology?  Talk  to  the  first  man 
you  meet  about  original  sin,  and  he  will  listen 
to  you  unmoved.  But  talk  to  him  about  the 
solidarity  of  evil — the  transmission  of  evil 
impulses  through  biological  channels  and  so- 
cial institutions — and  he  will  at  least  give  you 
interested  attention.  Talk  to  this  same  chance 
acquaintance  about  imputed  guilt  or  imputed 
righteousness,  and  he  will  feel  at  once  the 
clammy  touch  of  unreality.  But  call  his  at- 
tention to  the  responsibility  of  every  citizen 
for  the  moral  conditions  which  prevail  in  his 
city,  and  he  will  begin  to  suspect  that  religion 
has  something  to  do  with  life.  So  also  the 
word  " grace' '  is  to  many  people  meaningless. 
But  if,  instead  of  talking  about  "  grace/ '  one 
were  to  speak  of  the  power  which  enters  men's 
lives  whenever  contact  is  established  with  any 
13 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

great  life-giving  personality,  human  or  di- 
vine, would  lie  not  secure  an  intelligent  and 
sympathetic  response  ? 

There  are  a  few  people  still  in  all  the 
churches  in  whose  minds  religious  passion  is 
ever  inseparable  from  a  certain  stereotyped 
religious  vocabulary;  and  when  they  fail  to 
hear  the  ancient  phrases  they  suspect  the  ab- 
sence of  the  ancient  passion.  But  over  against 
these  relatively  few  persons  within  the  church 
there  is  the  great  multitude  outside  the  church 
whom  the  Christian  pulpit  will  be  powerless 
to  reach  if  it  insists  upon  employing  a  reli- 
gious vocabulary  which  none  save  the  most 
carefully  instructed  person  is  able  to  under- 
stand. 

n 

Nor  is  it  merely  the  language  of  religion 
that  must  be  kept  alive.  The  thought  forms 
of  religion,  its  doctrines,  its  so-called  articles, 
must  be  kept  alive  if  the  church  is  to  function 
in  any  great  and  helpful  way.  In  the  famous 
essay  on  "The  Will  to  Believe,"  Professor 
James  contends  that  we  have  a  right  to  be- 
lieve, at  our  own  risk,  any  hypothesis  that  is 
alive  enough  to  tempt  the  will.  The  church 
has  not  only  an  incontestable  right  but  a  sol- 
emn duty  to  ask  men  to  believe  in  something. 

14 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

It  is  only  as  men  begin  enthusiastically  to  be- 
lieve in  something  that  any  advance  in  civi- 
lization can  be  made.  But  the  church  must 
see  to  it  that  what  she  does  ask  men  to  be- 
lieve in  is  something  that  is  alive  enough  to 
tempt  their  wills  and  to  capture  their  alle- 
giance. The  church  cannot  hope  to  command 
the  respect  and  devotion  of  forward-looking 
men  if  she  insists  upon  clinging  to  dogmas 
which  the  world's  best  intelligence  has  repu- 
diated, and  the  world's  best  conscience  has 
come  to  deplore.  The  time  has  passed  when  the 
church  might  identify  truth  with  tradition 
and  say  to  men,  "As  the  fathers  believed  so 
must  their  sons  believe  throughout  all  gen- 
erations.'' 

One  might  call  attention  to  the  futility  of 
this  attempt.  Can  the  church  keep  men  from 
entering  into  the  intellectual  heritage  of  the 
ages,  or  even  into  the  intellectual  discoveries 
of  their  own  age?  It  can  for  a  time.  The 
ignorant  peasantry  of  southern  Italy,  the  op- 
pressed and  degraded  peons  of  Mexico,  are, 
no  doubt,  sufficient  evidence  of  the  power  of 
the  church  to  keep  men  uninformed  for  a 
time — but  not  for  all  time.  Not  long  ago,  a 
friend  of  the  author's,  while  in  the  extreme 
southern  part  of  Mexico,  found  a  Eussian  Jew 
preaching  the  gospel  of  bolshevism  to  half- 

15 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

naked  Indians  under  the  very  roof  of  a  Ro- 
man Catholic  church.  Can  the  church  keep 
men  permanently  from  thinking  new  thoughts 
and  cherishing  new  ambitions?  As  well  ask, 
Can  the  church  keep  to-morrow's  sun  from 
rising,  slowly  at  first,  so  that  only  the  most 
distant  horizon  reveals  the  gray-clad  outposts 
of  the  coming  dawn,  but  steadily  and  resist- 
lessly  advancing  until  the  glory  of  a  new  day 
has  captured  the  world? 

But  perhaps  it  were  even  better  to  call  at- 
tention to  the  essential  faithlessness  of  this 
insistence  upon  a  stereotyped  creed,  an  un- 
changing theology.  I  once  heard  a  description 
of  faith  which  I  shall  never  forget  as  long 
as  faith  remains  for  me  the  great  life 
principle,  the  beating  heart  of  all  progress. 
"We  are  standing,"  said  the  speaker,  "in  a 
little  circle  of  light.  All  about  us  is  darkness. 
Faith  is  the  courage  with  which  one  steps  out 
into  that  darkness,  not  knowing  what  he  will 
find  there,  but  trusting  that  the  God  of  the 
light  is  the  God  also  of  the  darkness,  and  that 
in  the  end  all  will  be  found  to  be  true  and 
right."1  A  few  illustrations  will  suffice  to 
make  clear  his  meaning.    Here  is  Abraham. 

1  Kirsopp  Lake,  professor  of  Early  Christian  Literature  in  Harvard 
University.  I  am  obliged  to  rely  upon  my  memory  for  this  quotation, 
and  I  may  not  have  reproduced  the  lecturer's  exact  words,  but  I  feel  sure 
that  I  have  stated  his  exact  meaning. 

16 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

He  stands  in  a  little  circle  of  light — Ur  of  the 
Chaldees.  Kound  about  him  is  darkness. 
Faith  in  him  is  the  courage  with  which  he 
sleps  out  into  that  darkness,  not  knowing 
what  he  will  find  there,  but  trusting  that  in 
the  end  all  will  be  well.  Here  also  is  Chris- 
topher Columbus.  He  too  stands  in  a  little 
circle  of  light — the  limited  geographical 
knowledge  and  cosmological  science  of  his  day. 
Kound  about  him  is  the  vast  darkness  of  an 
untraveled  ocean.  Faith  in  him  is  the  cour- 
age with  which  he  pushes  out  into  that  dark- 
ness, crying,  "Sail  on!  Sail  on!  Sail  on!" 
And  here,  once  more,  are  weary,  impov- 
erished, war-torn  nations.  They  likewise  are 
standing  in  a  little  circle  of  light — the  experi- 
ence of  the  race  until  now,  crowded  with  wars 
and  rumors  of  war  and  all  the  horrible  con- 
sequences of  strife.  About  them,  surely,  is 
the  thick  darkness  of  a  great  uncertainty. 
But  what  if  they  had  the  courage  to  move  out 
into  that  darkness  along  the  lines  of  interna- 
tional justice  and  good  will!  What  if  they 
had  the  courage  to  form  a  real  league  of  na- 
tions, aiming  to  secure  justice,  and  to  main- 
tain the  peace  of  the  world?  It  might  be  that 
by  faith  they  would  achieve  that  better  civi- 
lization for  which  in  our  time  millions  of  men 
have  fought  and  died. 

17 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

But  now  consider :  if  faith  be  the  courage 
with  which  men  step  out  into  the  darkness  of 
the  unknown,  trusting  that  the  God  of  the 
known  is  the  God  also  of  the  unknown,  and 
that  in  the  end  all  will  be  found  to  be  true  and 
right — if  this  be  faith,  it  follows  that  among 
the  men  who  lack  faith  is  the  dogmatist.  For 
the  dogmatist  is  a  man  who  stands  in  his  little 
circle  of  light  and  remains  standing  there, 
afraid  to  budge!  How  often  has  the  church 
applied  the  word  "skeptic"  to  the  wrong 
man!  Copernicus,  Galileo,  Darwin,  Tolstoy 
— these  men,  one  after  another,  the  church 
has  branded  as  skeptics.  But  judged  by  the 
description  which  we  now  have  before  us 
every  one  of  these  men  possessed  a  vast  deal 
of  faith.  Who  is  the  real  skeptic  ?  Never  the  ad- 
venturer. The  real  skeptic  is  the  dogmatist 
— the  man  who  is  afraid  to  venture,  to  experi- 
ment, to  become  a  pioneer  in  the  spiritual 
world.  The  real  skeptic  is  never  the  man  who 
is  honestly  and  courageously  seeking  the  truth 
if  haply  he  may  find  it,  but,  rather,  the  man 
who  dogmatically  asserts  that  he  has  the 
truth,  and  that  no  further  investigation  is 
needed.  Consider,  then,  the  essential  faith- 
lessness of  a  closed  theological  system,  and 
of  men  who  stand  in  their  little  circles  of  light 
refusing  to  move  out,  and  on. 
18 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

Consider  this  also — the  relationship  be- 
tween ecclesiastical  dogmatism  and  political 
autocracy.  They  are  twin  sisters,  and  are 
founu  always  together.  Democracy  calls  for 
the  scientific  method,  the  method  of  investiga- 
tion and  experiment,  for  democracy  desires 
ever  to  create  something  new  and  something 
better.  But  autocracy  calls  for  the  dogmatic 
method  of  authoritative  assertion;  for  autoc- 
racy is  interested  only  in  the  upholding  of  the 
existing  order,  and  this  can  be  done  never  by 
granting  the  right  of  free  inquiry  and  experi- 
mentation, but  only  by  insisting  upon  ortho- 
doxy, an  unquestioning  acceptance  of  received 
traditions.  Thus  democracy  calls  for  the 
prophet  and  autocracy  calls  for  the  priest. 
Nicholas  II  needed  a  Pobedonoscev.  And  in 
every  nation  where  autocracy  has  flourished 
for  a  time,  an  autocratic  government  has  been 
supported  by  a  dogmatic  church.  It  is  one  of 
the  most  pitiful  and  damnable  scandals  of  his- 
tory that  churches  claiming  to  be  Christian 
have  in  instance  after  instance  exerted  the 
whole  weight  of  their  influence  in  behalf  of 
political  despotism  and  reaction. 

December  14  of  the  year  1825  witnessed  the 
first  great  attempt  to  secure  some  form  of 
representative  government  in  Eussia.8    The 

*  See  Masaryk's,  The  Spirit  of  Russia,  vol  i,  p.  95ff . 

19 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

revolution  was  headed  by  members  of  the 
Eussian  aristocracy,  including  many  of  the 
most  brilliant  and  promising  intellectuals. 
The  aims  of  the  revolutionists,  judged  by  cer- 
tain present-day  demands,  were  mild  enough. 
In  addition  to  some  form  of  constitutional 
government,  they  were  seeking  certain  mili- 
tary reforms,  such  as  the  reduction  of  the 
period  of  military  service,  then  twenty-five 
years,  and  the  mitigation,  not  abolition,  of 
corporal  punishment.  But  the  revolt  was  un- 
successful, and  more  than  a  thousand  of  its 
leaders  were  arrested.  Of  these,  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-one  were  pronounced  guilty, 
and  were  sentenced,  five  to  be  quartered, 
thirty-one  to  be  guillotined,  the  rest  to 
be  exiled  to  Siberia.  It  is  only  just  to  add 
that  in  respect  of  the  five  chief  offenders  the 
Tsar  finally  relented,  and  instead  of  having 
them  quartered  he  "merely  had  them 
hanged. ' '  And  then,  if  any  enlightened  Eus- 
sian ventured  to  give  utterance  to  liberal 
ideas,  the  Tsar  had  him  officially  pronounced 
insane!  This  frightfully  reactionary  policy 
of  the  Eussian  government  was  supported 
throughout  by  the  Eussian  Church.  The 
Tsar's  minister  of  education  declared,  "It  is 
our  joint  task  to  secure  that  the  culture  of 
the  nation  shall  be  carried  on  in  the  unified 
20 


TO  BE  SAVED!- 

spirit  of  orthodoxy,  autocracy,  and  patriot- 
ism." The  church  declared,  "God  himself 
commands  us  to  obey  the  Tsar's  authority, 
not  from  fear  alone,  but  as  a  point  of  con- 
science.,,  And  to  the  young  recruits  who 
were  doomed  to  serve  for  twenty-five  years  in 
the  Russian  army,  the  church  said, ' i  God  wills 
that  you  should  serve  him  and  the  great  Tsar 
as  soldiers ;  before  you  were  born  it  was  God's 
determination  that  you  should  become  war- 
riors.'' 

* '  The  mills  of  God  grind  slowly,  yet  they 
grind  exceeding  small."  And  the  awful  fate 
which  has  overtaken  the  church  in  Russia 
awaits  the  church  in  any  nation  where  politi- 
cal or  industrial  autocracy  is  supported  by 
ecclesiastical  dogmatism.  It  is  important  that 
the  church  should  modernize  its  dogma  and 
make  it  a  fit  temple  for  the  modern  mind. 
But  it  is  of  even  greater  importance  that  the 
church  should  surrender  forever  the  dogmatic 
spirit.  An  intellectually  indefensible  dogma 
is  bad ;  but  what  is  utterly  and  ruinously  bad 
is  that  spirit  of  dogmatism  which  opposes  all 
progress,  whether  in  the  church  or  in  the 
state,  and  becomes  a  source  not  of  life  but 
of  death. 

The  real  danger  to  religion  lies  not  in 
change  but,  rather,  in  stagnation.  Change 
21 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

may  mean  growth,  more  life;  stagnation  al- 
ways means  death.  The  real  danger  to  reli- 
gion lies  not  in  the  intellectual  progressive- 
ness,  the  spiritual  radicalism,  of  a  Jesus,  but 
in  the  selfish  worldliness  of  a  Caiaphas.  The 
church  may  be  misled  for  a  time  by  intellec- 
tual pioneers  who  miss  the  way ;  she  is  certain 
to  be  morally  and  spiritually  suffocated  by 
untransformed  worldlings  who  give  lip  alle- 
giance to  her  creed,  but  no  allegiance  to  her 
Founder. 

m 

If  the  church  is  to  make  any  vital  contribu- 
tion toward  a  better  civilization,  it  must  be- 
come  a   thoroughly   unselfish    organization. 

One  of  the  best  and  ablest  of  the  younger 
clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  has  com- 
plained that  the  Anglican  Church  is  seldom 
deeply  moved;  that  only  one  subject  moves 
it  to  heroic  exertion  and  to  displays  of  genu- 
ine and  undoubted  zeal;  that,  unfortunately, 
that  one  subject  is  the  question  of  its  own 
establishment  and  endowments.  Just  how 
far  this  criticism  really  applies  to  the  Church 
of  England  I  am  not  prepared  to  say.  Nor 
am  I  prepared  to  say  just  how  far  it  applies 
in  spirit  to  the  Non-Conformist  bodies  either 
of  England  or  of  America.  I  refer  to  it  be- 
22 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

cause  it  calls  attention  to  one  of  the  subtlest 
and  most  dangerous  temptations  to  which  the 
church  is  exposed,  namely,  the  temptation  to 
think  of  itself  as  an  end  in  itself  and  not  as  a 
means  to  an  end.  The  great  end  that  is  set 
before  the  church  is  the  development,  the  en- 
richment, the  Christianization  of  human  life. 
But  this  great  end  is  frequently  lost  sight  of 
by  people  who  compose  the  church.  They 
think  of  the  work  of  the  church,  not  in  terms 
of  human  values,  but  in  terms  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal values.  The  first  question  that  leaps  into 
their  minds  when  any  new  plan  is  proposed  is 
not,  How  will  this  affect  the  lives  of  men?  but, 
How  will  this  affect  the  life  of  the  church? 
How  will  it  affect  attendance  upon  the 
evening  service  or  the  morning  service  ?  How 
will  it  affect  the  treasury  of  the  church?  If 
people  are  urged  to  give  to  some  new  project, 
will  they  not  have  less  to  give  to  the  church? 
Such  questions  as  these  are  not  born  of  con- 
scious, deliberate  selfishness.  They  are  fre- 
quently framed  by  people  concerning  whom 
many  a  beautiful  act  bears  witness  that  in 
their  personal  lives  they  are  splendidly  un- 
selfish. The  psychology  of  the  situation  is 
somewhat  like  this:  People  believe  in  the 
church.  They  have  reason  to  believe  in  it. 
It  has  meant  much  to  them.  If  it  does  not 
23 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

mean  much  to  the  multitude  outside,  it  is 
plainly  the  fault  of  those  who  will  not  come  in, 
not  the  fault  of  those  who  are  in.  If  certain 
obdurate  persons  elect  to  remain  outside  the 
church,  so  much  the  worse  for  them.  Those 
who  have  found  in  the  services  of  the  sanctu- 
ary the  spiritual  nourishment  which  their 
souls  require  will  see  to  it  that  nothing  is 
permitted  to  jeopardize  the  interests  of  an 
institution  that  has  meant  so  much  to  them, 
and  which  could  mean  much  to  many  who 
blindly  pass  it  by.  They  do  not  realize,  these 
churchgoing  people,  that  they  are  seeking  first, 
not  the  salvation  of  the  community,  but  the 
salvation  of  the  church.  Unconsciously,  they 
are  demanding  of  the  community  that  it  shall 
feed  the  church,  not  of  the  church  that  it  shall 
feed  the  community. 

But  the  great  law  enunciated  by  Jesus  ap- 
plies not  only  to  individuals.  It  applies  to 
such  collectivities  as  the  church.  "Whoso- 
ever would  save  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  and  who- 
soever shall  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  shall 
find  it."  The  only  way  in  which  the  church 
can  hope  to  save  its  life  is  by  daring  to  lose  it 
— by  daring  to  lose  sight  of  it.  The  church 
must  stop  thinking  about  itself  and  begin  to 
think  about  the  community.  It  must  stop  ask- 
ing, "How  can  this  community  be  induced  to 
24 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

attend  the  services  of  this  church ?"  and  begin 
to  ask,  "How  can  this  church  be  induced  to 
render  service  to  this  community  V9  Let  no 
one  depreciate  the  so-called  services  of  the 
church.  "Man  cannot  live  by  bread  alone.' ' 
He  requires  faith,  hope,  love,  good  cheer,  in- 
spiration. Services  in  which  the  souls  of  men 
are  fed  are  never  held  in  vain.  Such  services 
render  service  of  inestimable  value.  But  a 
church  whose  chief  concern  is  to  keep  its  own 
machinery  going  is  not  apt  to  hold  a  service  in 
which  anybody's  soul  will  be  fed.  The  only 
church  whose  services  will  render  service  is 
the  church  that  has  dared  to  lay  aside  its  outer 
garments,  and  take  a  towel,  and  gird  itself,  and 
pour  water  into  a  basin,  and  begin  to  wash  the 
community's  weary,  dust-laden  feet.  When 
the  church  starts  out  to  render  service,  and 
not  merely  to  increase  attendance  upon  its 
services,  its  services  will  take  on  such  a  jubi- 
lant, inspirational  character  that  attendance 
upon  them  will  increase  by  leaps  and  bounds. 
When  the  church  stops  thinking  about  itself 
and  begins  to  think  about  the  community,  the 
community  will  begin  to  think  about  the 
church.  Any  church  that  dares  to  lose  its 
life  for  Christ's  sake,  that  is  to  say,  for  the 
community's  sake,  will  gloriously  find  it.  And 
no  one  will  question  its  right  to  live. 
25 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

IV 

Democracy  was  born  of  Christianity.  It 
was  born  in  the  soul  of  Jesus  who  had  such  a 
mighty  faith  in  the  common  man ;  who  saw  in 
every  man,  born  of  woman,  all  the  potential 
power  and  glory  of  a  son  of  God.  And  the 
church  which  bears  the  name  of  Jesus  has 
played  no  small  part  in  getting  democracy 
established  in  the  life  of  the  world.  Its  con- 
dition of  membership  has  been,  now  a  sacra- 
ment, now  a  creed;  here  baptism,  there  con- 
fession. But  whatever  the  condition,  it  has 
never  made  any  distinction  between  rich  and 
poor,  the  high-placed  and  the  low-placed,  the 
ruler  and  the  ruled.  All  who  were  willing  to 
be  baptized  might  come.  All  who  were  ready 
to  join  in  the  great  confession  might  come. 
And  slaves  came.  The  first  Christian  con- 
gregations were  made  up  largely  of  men  who 
were  owned  by  other  men.  Later,  soldiers 
came;  soldiers  of  the  greatest  and  proudest 
empire  of  ancient  times.  Finally  came  men 
of  light  and  leading,  men  of  wealth  and  influ- 
ence. To-day,  the  doors  of  the  church  are 
open  wide  to  men  of  all  races  and  nations,  all 
classes  and  parties,  all  languages  and  colors. 
By  its  condition  of  membership,  down 
through  the  centuries,  the  church  has  borne 
26 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

witness  to  the  democracy  that  leaped  into  be- 
ing in  the  soul  of  Jesus.  It  has  proclaimed  in 
trumpet  tones,  "One  is  your  Father;  all  ye 
are  brethren." 

But  what  the  world  now  needs  is  not  merely 
a  witness  to  democracy,  but  an  embodiment 
of  democracy.  And  lonely,  heart-hungry 
people,  or  cynical,  skeptical  people,  who  are 
looking  for  an  embodiment  of  democracy,  do 
not  always  find  it  in  the  Christian  Church. 
The  democracy  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
is  more  apparent  than  real.  Rich  and  poor 
kneel  at  the  same  altar;  but  once  they  have 
left  the  great  cathedral  they  are  apt  to  become 
strangers.  And  if  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  democracy  is  more  apparent  than 
real,  in  many  Protestant  churches  it  is  not 
even  apparent.  A  fellow  minister  once  told 
me  that  some  of  the  women  of  his  congrega- 
tion were  accustomed  to  make  church  calls. 
I  asked  for  enlightenment,  and  discovered 
that  a  "church  call"  is  a  purely  perfunctory 
visit  which  Mrs.  Dives  pays  to  Mrs.  Lazarus, 
and  which  Mrs.  Lazarus,  though  she  belongs 
to  the  same  congregation,  is  expected  under  no 
circumstances  to  return.  I  myself  once  heard 
an  elect  lady  declare  concerning  another  wom- 
an of  the  same  church  that  her  interest  in  this 
humbler  sister  was  spiritual  rather  than  so- 
27 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

cial.  People  whose  interest  in  other  people 
is  spiritual  rather  than  social,  ecclesiastical 
rather  than  human,  make  it  impossible  for 
the  church  to  embody  the  democracy  to  which 
it  has  so  splendidly  borne  witness.  The  man 
on  the  street  who  passes,  but  never  enters, 
the  door  of  the  church  says  in  his  haste  that 
church  people  are  hypocrites ;  and  church  peo- 
ple do  not  feel  kindly  toward  the  man  on  the 
street  because  he  says  this.  But  when  the 
careful  observer  sees  within  the  church  the 
same  class  consciousness,  the  same  foolish 
pride  and  snobbery,  that  he  sees  outside  the 
church,  he  can  at  least  understand  the  some- 
what harsh  and  hasty  judgment  of  the  man  of 
the  street. 

Said  Jesus,  "A  new  commandment  I  give 
unto  you,  that  ye  love  one  another. ' '  He  said 
it  to  people  who  were  in  the  church,  not  to 
people  who  were  outside  the  church.  He 
added,  "By  this  shall  all  men  know  that  ye 
are  my  disciples,  if  ye  have  love  one  to  an- 
other.' '  Would  anything  be  so  likely  to  con- 
vince a  skeptical  world  of  the  integrity  of  the 
church  as  a  demonstration  of  the  democracy 
which  the  church  professes?  With  magnifi- 
cent rhetoric  the  church  has  proclaimed  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of 
man.  But,  unfortunately,  she  has  tolerated 
28 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

class  distinctions  and  class  pride  within  her 
own  organization;  and  a  skeptical  world  has 
looked  on,  sometimes  with  anger,  sometimes 
with  amusement,  always  with  contempt.  What 
if  the  church  should  begin  not  only  to  preach 
brotherhood  but  to  practice  it?  What  if  the 
most  brotherly  organization  in  town  were  not 
the  Knights  of  Pythias,  or  the  Elks'  Club,  or 
Mike  Fogarty's  saloon,  but  the  Christian 
Church?  What  if  the  Christian  Church 
should  become  a  place  where  Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry,  together  with  their  wives  and  children, 
could  meet,  not  on  the  basis  of  an  impossible 
equality  which  never  has  existed,  and  never 
will  exist,  but  on  the  basis  of  a  mutual  sym- 
pathy and  good  will  which  has  not  always  ex- 
isted, but  might  exist?  In  the  presence  of  a 
church  that  merely  preaches  brotherhood  the 
world  will  remain  cynical  till  the  crack  of 
doom.  But  in  the  presence  of  a  church  that 
dared  to  practice  brotherhood  the  last  vestige 
of  the  world 's  cynicism  would  be  blown  away, 
and  the  kingdom  of  God  would  come  with 
power  in  that  community. 

V 

Through  centuries  past  the  church  has  de- 
voted her  time  and  resources  to  the  saving  of 
individuals.     And  what  a  magnificent  work 
29 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

she  has  done !  She  has  found  men  drunk  and 
left  them  sober.  She  has  found  men  polluted 
and  left  them  clean.  She  has  found  them  de- 
spairing and  left  them  hoping.  And  in  gen- 
eration after  generation  she  has  produced 
individual  men  and  women  who  loyally  re- 
strained every  lawless  inclination,  and  loved 
the  Lord  their  God  with  all  their  strength,  and 
their  neighbors  as  themselves,  and  so  became 
as  the  salt  of  the  earth  and  saved  their  com- 
munities from  utter  rottenness.  If  anyone 
is  tempted  to  depreciate  this  service  which 
the  church  has  historically  rendered,  let  him 
consider  what  sort  of  world  we  would  be  liv- 
ing in  to-day  if  service  such  as  this  had  not 
been  given  us.  Let  him  also  consider  how 
long  it  will  be  before  we  get  any  better  social 
order  if  the  church  does  not  continue  to  de- 
velop in  individuals  that  mind  which  was  also 
in  Christ  Jesus. 

But  to-day,  the  church  must  have  faith  not 
only  in  the  improvableness  of  men,  but  in  the 
improvableness  of  man,  of  human  nature,  and 
so,  eventually,  of  human  society.  The  ques- 
tion as  to  the  usefulness  of  the  church  to  the 
modern  world  will,  I  think,  be  determined,  in 
no  small  degree,  by  the  answer  which  the 
church  returns  to  such  questions  as  these: 
What  of  prostitution?     What  of  industrial 

30 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

strife  and  injustice?  What  of  war?  Lust, 
greed,  pugnacity — these  certainly  are  power- 
ful instincts,  and  universally  distributed. 
But,  recognizing  both  their  universality  and 
their  power,  has  the  church  faith  enough  in 
God  and  in  man  to  say  that  lust  may  be  trans- 
muted into  love,  greed  into  altruism,  and  that 
pugnacity,  far  from  remaining  a  force  that 
is  wholly  destructive,  may  be  transformed  into 
a  force  that  is  splendidly  constructive  ?  What 
will  the  church  say  to  the  cynicism  which  is 
now  so  noisily  present  in  certain  quarters? 
To  men  affirming  that  human  nature  being 
what  it  is,  prostitution  is  inevitable,  what  will 
the  church  say?  And  when  men  argue  that 
human  nature  being  what  it  is  war  is  inevi- 
table, what  will  the  church  reply?  If  the 
church  should  lose,  or,  perhaps  one  should 
say,  fail  to  achieve,  the  faith  of  Jesus  in  the 
possibility  of  a  better  civilization,  then  I  be- 
lieve she  would  seriously  jeopardize  her  fu- 
ture. For,  whatever  may  be  true  of  cynical, 
unbelieving  individuals,  in  the  heart  of  man- 
kind are  quenchless  longings  and  passionate 
hopes;  and  a  struggling,  discontented,  aspir- 
ing humanity  will  not  continue  forever  to  sup- 
port any  institution  which  mocks  and  denies 
its  highest  hopes.  If  the  church  should  not 
believe  it  possible,  then  the  suffering  masses 

31 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

of  men  will  turn  to  some  other  organization 
which  does  believe  it  possible  for  prostitution, 
industrial  strife,  and  injustice,  even  war,  to 
be  done  away. 

VI 

In  the  days  to  come  anything  like  a  narrow, 
bitter,  bigoted  denominationalism  will  be 
hopelessly  out  of  place.  The  Great  "War  has 
not  made  the  world  safe  for  democracy.  In 
fact,  it  has  in  many  places  accentuated  the  very 
evils  which  it  was  intended  to  destroy.  But 
this  one  good  thing  it  has  done :  it  has  blown 
down  some  of  the  high  walls  of  religious 
prejudice. 

One  thinks  of  the  ancient  enmity  between 
Jews  and  Gentiles,  when  the  Mishna  forbade 
aid  to  be  given  to  a  Gentile  woman  in  her 
hour  of  need,  and  even  forbade  nourishment 
to  be  given  to  her  babe.  Then  he  thinks  of  the 
splendid  service  rendered  by  Jewish  people 
in  Belgian  relief  work.  One  thinks  of  Shake- 
speare 's  Shylock,  his  contempt  for  Christians, 
and  their  contempt  for  him.  Then  he  thinks 
of  that  Jewish  rabbi  on  the  western  front.  A 
Catholic  boy  lay  wounded  and  dying.  There 
was  no  Catholic  chaplain  near.  So  the  Jewish 
rabbi  stooped  down  and  picked  up  a  twig,  bent 
it  in  the  form  of  a  cross,  and  held  the  cross 
32 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

before  the  glazed  eyes  of  the  Catholic  soldier 
until  he  died.  One  thinks  of  the  so-called 
religious  wars  that  decimated  Europe,  when 
Catholics  burned  Protestants  and  Protes- 
tants hanged  Catholics.  Then  he  thinks  of 
Eoman  Catholic  boys  writing  to  their  folks, 
in  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  huts, 
on  stationery  furnished  by  Protestant  people ; 
and  of  Protestant  boys  writing  to  their  folks, 
in  Knights  of  Columbus  huts,  on  stationery 
furnished  by  Eoman  Catholic  people. 

I  myself  have  witnessed  incidents  that 
five  years  ago  would  have  been  deemed  incred- 
ible. I  have  seen  a  Methodist  preacher  act 
as  an  usher  at  a  Eoman  Catholic  mass.  The 
mass  was  held  in  a  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association  hut,  where  the  preacher  was  serv- 
ing as  a  secretary.  The  Catholic  boys  came 
streaming  into  the  hut  in  such  numbers  that 
they  were  unable  to  find  seats ;  so  the  preacher- 
secretary  promptly  assumed  the  role  of  usher. 
I  can  vouch  for  the  truth  of  this  story,  for  I 
was  the  preacher.  I  can  also  vouch  for  the 
fact  that  Father  O'Connor  promptly  recip- 
rocated by  making  a  substantial  contribution 
from  his  own  pocket  to  the  work  being  done 
by  the  Protestant  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation. I  told  this  story  in  Urbana,  Ohio, 
where  he  had  been  a  priest ;  he  told  it  in  Co- 
33 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

lumbus,  Ohio,  where  I  had  been  a  pastor.  As 
a  result,  Methodists  in  Urbana  made  pleas- 
ant remarks  concerning  Roman  Catholics,  and 
Roman  Catholics  in  Columbus  made  pleasant 
remarks  concerning  Methodists ;  and  the  Mas- 
ter's prayer,  "That  they  may  all  be  one,  even 
as  we  are  one, '  \  came  a  little  nearer  to  reali- 
zation. 

Just  before  I  left  Camp  Sheridan,  I  was  in- 
vited by  the  Jewish  rabbi  of  Montgomery  to 
speak  in  the  synagogue  on  the  work  being 
done  by  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion. I  eagerly  accepted  the  invitation.  At 
the  close  of  the  service  a  father  of  Israel 
walked  slowly  toward  the  pulpit.  His  hair 
was  long  and  white,  his  countenance  typically 
Hebrew.  His  eyes  were  full  of  tears,  and 
grasping  both  my  hands  in  his  he  said, 
"Young  man,  I  want  you  to  know  that  I  am 
nearer  to  being  a  Jewish  Christian  to-day 
than  I  have  ever  been  before."  Deeply 
moved,  restraining  with  difficulty  the  tears 
that  would  have  come  to  my  own  eyes,  I  re- 
plied, "If  you,  sir,  are  nearer  to  being  a  Jew- 
ish Christian,  I  suspect  I  am  nearer  to  being 
a  Christian  Jew." 

In  France,  in  the  last  camp  where  I  was 
privileged  to  serve,  a  Roman  Catholic  lad 
assisted  me  by  handing  cookies  over  the  coun- 
34 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

ter;  and  a  Jewish  lad,  by  washing  the  cups 
from  which  his  Protestant  comrades  had 
drunk  their  chocolate. 

In  our  day  millions  of  men  have  trained  and 
fought  and  suffered  with  men  who  pro- 
nounced different  denominational  shibboleths 
and  professed  different  creeds.  These  men 
have  learned  to  look  upon  one  another  with 
a  new  understanding  and  a  new  respect.  They 
have  discovered  that  the  religious  beliefs 
which  unite  men  are  far  more  significant  and 
far  more  necessary  than  are  the  religious  be- 
liefs which  separate  men.  For  instance,  what 
really  matters  under  shell-fire  is  not  whether 
one  has  been  baptized  by  sprinkling  or  by  im- 
mersion, but  whether  one  believes  that  at  the 
heart  of  things  there  is  decency  and  justice, 
and  that  if  one  gives  his  life  for  some  good 
cause  he  will  not  have  died  in  vain. 

To-day,  who  can  fail  to  see  that  religious 
pride  and  bigotry  have  become  unseemly,  a 
sort  of  inexcusable  effrontery  of  which  all 
right-thinking  people  must  feel  ashamed? 
Just  before  David  Livingstone  laid  down  his 
life  in  Africa,  he  sent  that  now  famous  mes- 
sage to  the  outside  world:  "All  I  can  say  in 
my  loneliness  is,  May  God's  richest  blessing 
come  down  upon  any  man,  American,  English, 
Turk,  who  will  help  to  heal  this  open  sore  of 
35 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

the  world."  When  one  thinks  of  the  hell  of 
slaughter  through  which  we  have  passed — 
the  smoking  guns,  the  burning  villages,  the 
blinded  eyes,  the  broken  bodies,  the  decaying 
corpses;  when  he  thinks  of  the  white,  drawn 
faces  of  suffering  women,  and  of  the  white, 
thin  faces  of  frightened,  undernourished  chil- 
dren, ought  he  not  say,  "May  God's  richest 
blessing  come  down  upon  any  man — Method- 
ist, Baptist,  Lutheran,  Anglican,  Protestant, 
Catholic,  Gentile,  Jew — who  will  help  to  heal 
the  awful  wounds  of  a  war-shattered  world? 

The  tragedy  of  a  bickering  and  often  puer- 
ile denominationalism  lies  not  only  in  the  fact 
that  it  separates  men  who  ought  to  be  united. 
The  regrettable  situation  thus  precipitated  is 
in  process  of  correction  not  merely  in  conse- 
quence of  the  better  understanding  and  mu- 
tual respect  noted  above,  but,  also,  in  conse- 
quence of  certain  economic  factors  of  which 
even  the  most  bigoted  of  churchmen  must  take 
account.  A  day  is  almost  certainly  coming 
when  denominational  differences  which  in- 
volve no  real  difference  in  human  life  will  be 
held  not  to  justify  the  financial  support  of  a 
separate  institution.  Even  now  any  overlap- 
ping on  the  part  of  competing  denominations 
is  looked  upon  with  very  apparent  disap- 
proval by  a  heavily  taxed  public.  But  the 
36 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

tragedy  of  denominationalism  lies  also  in  this 
further  fact,  that  a  disunited  Christendom  is 
unable  to  speak  with  a  united  voice  even  when, 
as  in  August,  1914,  the  fate  of  a  world  hangs 
in  the  balance.  One  needs  only  to  consider 
what  might  have  happened  had  Christendom 
been  in  a  position  to  speak  with  a  clear  and 
united  voice  when  Austria  issued  her  ulti- 
matum to  Serbia  to  realize  how  truly  deplor- 
able is  our  present  situation.  Let  it  be  freely 
conceded  that  some  measure  of  difference, 
both  mental  and  temperamental,  will  always 
be  found  among  Christian  people.  Still,  may 
not  one  venture  to  believe  that  when  it  comes 
to  an  issue  such  as  confronted  the  world  when 
the  governing  classes  of  Europe  let  loose  the 
dogs  of  war,  the  followers  of  Jesus  ought  to 
be  able  to  speak  with  a  single  voice  f  If  they 
were  able  to  speak  with  a  single  voice  in  rela- 
tion to  any  great  issue  involving  the  welfare 
of  mankind,  the  world  might  consent  to  listen 
to  them.  It  might  even  be  compelled  to  listen 
to  them. 


37 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

CHAPTER  n 
THE  CHANGING  CONCEPTION  OF  GOD 

Change,  very  often,  is  just  another  name 
for  growth.  "When  I  was  a  child,' '  said 
Saint  Paul,  "I  spake  as  a  child,  I  felt  as  a 
child,  I  thought  as  a  child :  now  that  I  am  be- 
come a  man,  I  have  put  away  childish 
things."1  And  what  is  true  of  the  individual 
is  true  likewise  of  the  race.  The  race  out- 
grows and  ought  to  outgrow  its  childish 
notions. 

Men  once  believed  that  the  earth  was  fiat, 
and  that  if  some  Ulysses,  becoming  too  bold, 
should  sail  beyond  the  sunset,  he  would  drop 
off  into  a  fathomless  abyss.  And  this  childish 
notion  of  the  conformation  of  the  earth  had 
to  be  outgrown  before  the  American  continent 
could  be  discovered. 

Men  once  believed  that  disease  was  caused 
by  evil  spirits,  and  that  the  only  method  of 
cure  was  exorcism.  This  childish  notion  of 
disease  had  to  be  outgrown  before  any  of  the 
triumphs  of  modern  medicine,  modern  sur- 

* 1  Cor.  13.  11. 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

gery,    or   modern   sanitation   could   become 
possible. 

Men  once  believed  that  kings  ruled  by  di- 
vine right ;  that  the  voice  of  the  king  was  the 
will  of  God,  and  that  the  person  of  the  king 
was  sacred.  This  childish  notion  of  kingship 
had  to  be  outgrown  before  democracy  could 
get  a  start  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  and 
spread  from  coast  to  coast  and  from  shore  to 
shore. 

Men  once  thought  of  God  in  terms  of  near- 
by institutions  that  were  harsh  and  cruel. 
How  significant  that  story  of  Abraham  going 
forth,  in  obedience  to  what  he  conceives  to 
be  the  will  of  God,  to  slay  with  his  own  hand 
the  late-born  son  in  whom  he  has  centered  all 
his  hopes.  The  God  in  whom  Jacob  be- 
lieves is  a  God  with  whom  one  may  drive  a 
hard  bargain.  The  penniless  wanderer  reg- 
isters a  vow  that  if  Yahweh  will  give  him  food 
to  eat  and  raiment  to  wear  and  Oriental 
wealth  in  flocks  and  herds,  he,  for  his  part, 
will  give  back  to  Yahweh  a  tenth  of  all  he  shall 
come  to  possess.  How  significant,  also,  this 
naive  business  transaction  in  which  the  Deity 
is  offered  a  handsome  commission  for  his 
pains.  The  God  in  whom  the  author  of  the 
137th  psalm  believes  is  a  God  to  whom  one 
may  address  such  a  petition  as  this : 

39 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

Remember,  O  Lord,  against  the  children  of 
Edom 

The  day  of  Jerusalem ; 

Who  said,  Raze  it,  raze  it, 

Even  to  the  foundation  thereof. 

0  daughter  of  Babylon,  that  art  to  be  de- 
stroyed, 

Happy  shall  he  be,  that  rewardeth  thee 

As  thou  hast  served  us ; 

Happy  shall  he  be,  that  taketh  and  dasheth 
thy  little  ones 

Against  the  rock. 

These,  surely,  are  childish  notions  of  God, 
and  must  be  outgrown  before  men  can  see  God 
in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ. 

How  important  it  is  that  we  should  get  a 
true  conception  of  God.  Like  God,  like  men. 
The  conception  which  we  have  of  God  will 
influence  every  personal  aspiration  and  every 
far-reaching  social  enterprise. 

In  Ireland,  during  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  English  landlords  discovered 
that  land  planted  with  potatoes  would  feed 
three  times  as  many  people  as  would  the  same 
land  if  sown  with  wheat.2  So  they  forced  a 
potato  diet  upon  the  wretched  peasants  who 
cultivated  their  estates.    Then,  in  1846,  Ire- 

8  See  Commons,  Races  and  Immigrants  in  America,  p.  64ff . 

40 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

land  was  confronted  by  an  unprecedented 
potato-rot  which  destroyed  the  sole  food 
staple  of  the  mass  of  her  people.  Hundreds 
perished  through  sheer  starvation.  Many 
more  died  from  diseases  brought  on  by  malnu- 
trition. And  the  English  landlords  placed  the 
responsibility  for  this  appalling  situation 
upon  God!  In  obedience  to  the  inscrutable 
workings  of  an  all-wise  Providence  the 
blight  had  come.  Well,  this  "  passing  of  the 
buck"  to  the  Almighty  is  very  interesting. 
But  is  it  not  also  very  dangerous  1  If  respon- 
sibility for  a  brutal  economic  situation  can 
thus  easily  be  transferred  from  the  lords  of 
the  land  to  the  Lord  of  the  universe,  what 
hope  is  there  of  economic  reform?  Far  more 
illuminating  and  hopeful  was  the  diagnosis 
of  the  Society  of  Friends  in  Ireland,  who  de- 
clared that  the  calamity  which  had  befallen 
their  little  island  was  "a  means  permitted  by 
an  all-wise  Providence  to  exhibit  more  strik- 
ingly the  unsound  state  of  its  social  condi- 
tion. ' '  Is  it  claiming  too  much  to  say  that  the 
future  of  the  Emerald  Isle  will  depend  in  no 
small  degree  upon  the  conception  of  God  that 
now  prevails,  or  shall  prevail,  in  the  minds  of 
the  people  of  England  and  in  the  minds  of 
the  people  of  Ireland  f 

Some  one  once  said,  "  An  honest  man  is  the 
U 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

noblest  work  of  God";  to  which  some  one  else 
has  replied,  "An  honest  God  is  the  noblest 
work  of  man."  This  second  man  has  com- 
monly been  called  a  cynic.  But  ought  he  not 
rather  to  be  called  a  seer?  An  honest  God, 
a  God  who  is  great  enough  and  good  enough 
to  sustain  and  inspire  the  sons  of  men  in  an 
hour  like  this — is  there  any  need  more  uni- 
versal or  more  pressing?  Consider,  then,  the 
changing  conception  of  God. 


The  God  of  a  former  generation  was  an 
absentee  God,  sitting  on  the  outside  of  the 
universe,  watching  it  go.  The  figure  which 
men  used  to  suggest  God 's  relationship  to  the 
world  was  Paley's  famous  figure  of  the  watch 
and  the  watchmaker.  Now,  once  the  watch- 
maker has  made  his  watch  and  set  it  a-going, 
he  has  nothing  to  do  with  it  save  wind  it  up 
every  twenty-four  hours  and  repair  it  when  it 
gets  out  of  order.  By  the  same  token,  once 
God  has  made  his  world  and  set  it  a-going,  he 
has  nothing  to  do  with  it  save  in  a  time  of 
crisis.  God  dwells  outside  the  world  and  en- 
ters it  only  once  in  awhile  when  something 
extraordinary  (such  as  causing  a  potato-rot) 
is  to  be  done.  Evidence  of  God's  presence  is 
to  be  found,  not  in  the  usual,  but  only  in  the 
42 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

unusual;  not  in  the  normal  processes  of  life, 
but  only  in  the  occasional,  startling  occur- 
rence. 

To-day,  this  conception  reminds  one  almost 
irresistibly  of  those  spiritualistic  seances 
where  (the  lights  being  turned  low)  one  is 
gravely  informed  that  his  dear,  dead  grand- 
mother is  about  to  communicate  with  him; 
and  his  dear,  dead  grandmother,  who,  while 
alive,  was  nothing  if  not  a  saint,  begins  to 
communicate  with  him  by  causing  a  sedate- 
looking  center-table  to  dance  a  two-step.  How 
strange  that  men  should  look  for  evidence  of 
the  presence  of  God  in  "  signs  and  wonders 
and  prodigies  and  portents. "  No,  not 
strange,  when  one  considers  the  beginning  of 
religion  in  the  personalization  of  natural 
forces — and  the  extraordinary  vitality  of  a 
primitive  idea. 

But  this  notion  of  God  as  One  who  dwells 
outside  the  universe  and  enters  it  only  occa- 
sionally for  the  purpose  of  interfering  in  some 
way  with  the  ordinary  sequence  of  events, 
although  it  satisfied  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
men  who  lived  at  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  satisfies  neither  the  minds  nor 
the  hearts  of  men  who  are  living  now.  In- 
deed, it  has  become  an  intolerable  concep- 
tion. For  if  God  is  an  Absentee  Landlord 
43 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

who  returns  to  his  estate  only  when  something 
extraordinary  is  to  be  done,  surely  we  may  be 
allowed  to  think  that  just  now  something  ex- 
traordinary needs  to  be  done.  We  may  even 
be  permitted  the  question,  "  Why  does  not  Q-od 
come  and  do  it?" 

The  God  of  our  present  conception  does  not 
live  in  some  remote  heaven  "  above  the  bright 
blue  sky. ■ '   His  dwelling  place  is 

".     .     .     the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man." 

He  did  not  create  the  world  some  six  thou- 
sand years  ago  and  then  go  off  on  a  long  vaca- 
tion. "In  the  beginning,  God":  we  too  say 
it.  Start  with  what  you  will — a  bit  of  proto- 
plasm, a  whirling  fire-mist,  a  primal  cell. 
Start  when  you  will — six  thousand  years  back, 
six  hundred  thousand  years  back,  inconceiv- 
able millions  of  years  back.  Still  stands  that 
ancient  question,  In  the  beginning  what?  And 
we  answer,  "In  the  beginning,  God."  But  the 
God  in  whom  we  believe  to-day  is  to  be  found 
not  only  at  the  beginning,  but  at  every  mo- 
ment since  the  beginning,  at  work  in  his 
world :  causing  the  sun  to  shine  and  the  rain 
to  fall  upon  the  just  and  also  upon  the  unjust; 
setting  not  one  rainbow,  merely,  but  thou- 
U 


TO  BE  SAVED* 

sands  upon  thousands  of  rainbows  in  his  eve- 
ning sky ;  causing  not  one  bush,  only,  but  myr- 
iads of  bushes,  in  each  autumn  time,  to  flame 
with  color;  and  night  after  night  painting 
sunsets  which  not  even  a  Turner  can  copy. 

The  God  in  whom  we  believe  to-day  is  not 
a  carpenter  at  work  on  a  house.  He  is  not  a 
sculptor  at  work  on  a  statue.  He  is  not  a 
painter  at  work  on  a  canvas.  He  is  a  great 
and  good  indwelling  Spirit,  who  manifests 
himself  in  mountain  and  mist  and  tree  and 
flower  and  the  heart  of  a  child.  He  is  the  infi- 
nite and  eternal  Energy  from  which  all 
things  proceed.  He  is  the  Power,  not  our- 
selves, that  makes  for  righteousness. 

This  is  not  a  new  conception  of  God.  The 
God  of  our  present  faith  is  the  God  of  Saint 
Paul,  "in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being";  the  God  of  those  Stoic  philoso- 
phers with  whose  writings  Saint  Paul  was 
evidently  familiar;8  the  God  of  the  great 
Greek  theologians  of  the  second  and  third  cen- 
turies of  whom  Clement  of  Alexandria  was  a 
splendid  representative ;  the  God  of  Tennyson 
— "Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer 
than  hands  and  feet. ' '  The  notion  of  an  im- 
manent God  is  not  anything  new  under  the 

*  In  making  this  statement  I  am,  of  course,  thinking  only  of  the  notion 
of  divine  immanence. 

45 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

sun.  It  was  largely  lost  to  the  western  world 
in  the  fourth  century,  when  Augustine,  in  the 
effort  to  support  the  ambitious  structure  of 
Eoman  ecclesiasticism,  placed  an  Oriental 
Potentate  upon  the  throne  of  the  universe. 
But  now,  at  last,  it  is  being  recovered  in  an 
age  when  life  once  more  is  running  fluid,  and 
thought  is  free,  and  democracy  is  one  of  the 
ruling  conceptions  in  the  minds  of  men. 

To-day,  we  look  for  evidence  of  the  pres- 
ence of  God  in  all  literature  and  in  all  history. 
Did  God  speak  to  men  in  ancient  times  and 
then  suddenly  become  dumb?  Is  all  Hebrew 
literature  inspired,  and  all  other  literature 
uninspired!  Did  God  speak  through  David 
and  not  through  Browning?  Did  he  speak 
through  Solomon  and  not  through  Shake- 
speare? Through  Isaiah  and  not  through 
Ibsen?  We  refuse  to  believe  it.  Or,  again, 
is  all  Hebrew  history  providential  and  all 
other  history  accidental?  Did  God  work 
through  Abraham  and  not  through  Abraham 
Lincoln?  Did  he  work  through  John  the  Bap- 
tist and  not  through  John  Wesley  or  John 
Bright?  Is  there  a  progressive  revelation  of 
God  in  the  history  of  Israel  and  no  revelation 
of  God  in  the  history  of  other  peoples?  We 
refuse  to  believe  it.  We  insist  upon  believing 
in  a  living  God. 

46 


TO  BE  SAVED? 


n 


Just  here,  however,  there  rises  a  ques- 
tion with  which  many  persons  are  deeply  con- 
cerned. The  God  in  whom  we  live  and  move 
and  have  our  being,  the  immanent  God  of  our 
present  conception — is  this  God  a  Person  with 
whom  one  may  have  fellowship  as  friend  has 
with  friend? 

Well,  if  we  are  to  think  about  God  at  all, 
we  must  do  so  in  terms  of  something  that  has 
come  within  the  four  walls  of  our  own  experi- 
ence. We  must  search  the  storehouse  of  our 
own  consciousness  for  some  symbol  by  which 
to  represent  him.  If  we  refuse  to  do  this,  it 
merely  follows  that  we  cannot  think  about 
him  at  all.  And  if  we  must  think  of  God  in 
terms  of  some  element  in  our  own  experience, 
we  ought  to  think  of  him  in  terms  of  the  high- 
est and  best  that  we  know. 

In  terms  of  what,  then,  shall  we  think  of 
God?  Star  dust?  Energy?  Law?  Is  any 
one  of  these  the  highest  that  we  know?  Is  not 
Kepler,  thinking  God's  thoughts  after  him, 
more  wonderful  than  all  the  stars  he  has  seen 
through  his  telescope?  Is  not  Edison,  caus- 
ing light  itself  to  obey  him,  more  wonderful 
than  all  the  forces  at  his  command?  Is  not 
Darwin,  announcing  his  epoch-making  theory, 
47 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

more  wonderful  than  all  the  laws  he  has  dis- 
covered? Is  anything  so  wonderful  as  per- 
sonality. 

Personality  is  sometimes  acted  upon.  It 
is  influenced,  no  doubt,  by  geographic  condi- 
tions. One  need  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  with 
Lombroso  that  "revolutions  are  caused  by 
limestone  formations."  He  may  recognize 
the  part  which  mountains  play,  and  vast  river 
basins,  in  the  shaping  of  civilization.  It  also 
appears  that  personality  is  influenced  by  eco- 
nomic conditions.  One  need  not  agree  with 
the  curbstone  orator  who  shouts,  "Tell  me 
what  you  eat,  and  how  you  get  your  living, 
and  I  will  tell  you  what  you  are."  He  may 
recognize  the  part  which  a  living  wage  plays 
in  the  fashioning  of  character.  But  although 
it  is  evident  that  personality  is  sometimes 
acted  upon,  it  is  also  evident  that  personality 
acts.  Instances  have  been  known  where  the 
situation  changed  the  man.  Instances  also 
have  been  known  where  the  man  changed  the 
situation.  How  different  the  course  of  events 
if  certain  individuals  known  to  history  had 
never  lived  nor  labored!  What  would  have 
happened  in  American  politics  if  Theodore 
Roosevelt  had  never  wielded  the  big  stick? 
What  would  have  happened  in  American  his- 
tory if  the  man  who  signed  himself  A.  Lincoln 
48 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

had  been  killed  by  the  Indians  in  the  Black 
Hawk  War?  How  differently  European  his- 
tory wonld  read  if  Napoleon  Bonaparte  had 
been  less  capable  or  less  ambitious !  How  dif- 
ferent organized  Christianity  would  have  been 
if  John  Wycliffe  had  died  in  infancy,  or  Mar- 
tin Luther  had  been  struck  by  the  bolt  of 
lightning  which  killed  his  friend!  How  dif- 
ferent civilization  would  have  been  if  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  had  never  been  born!  Concede 
that  all  of  these  men,  including  Jesus,  were 
influenced  by  their  geographic  and  economic 
environment;  the  fact  remains,  big,  clear,  un- 
deniable, that  not  only  were  they  acted  upon 
— they  acted.  They  lived,  they  wrought — and 
the  world  was  different. 

Is  there  anything  within  the  whole  range  of 
human  experience  that  is  nearly  so  wonderful 
as  personality?  Since,  then,  if  we  are  to 
think  of  God  at  all,  we  must  think  of  him  in 
terms  of  something  that  we  know;  and  since 
we  ought  to  think  of  him  in  terms  of  the  high- 
est and  best  that  we  know,  shall  we  not  think 
of  him  in  terms  of  personality?  So  it  is  that 
a  man  like  Browning  thinks  of  God. 

"O  Saul,  it  shall  be 
A  face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee,  a  man  like  unto 

me 
Shalt  thou  love  and  be  loved  by  forever;  .  .  .  See  the 
Christ  stand. 

49 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

Browning  is  not  picturing  God  as  a  magnified 
man.  He  is  taking  the  loftiest  personality 
that  ever  flashed  in  moral  splendor  before 
the  astonished  eyes  of  men  and  daring  to 
think  of  God  in  terms  of  that!  Surely,  we 
may  believe  that  God  is  at  least  as  personal 
as  we  are.  We  cannot  define  the  Lord  our 
God.  The  moment  we  attempt  to  define  him 
we  limit  him.  He  is  greater  than  all  our  defi- 
nitions. He  is  more  than  all  our  symbols. 
But  granted  that  personality,  as  applied  to 
God,  is  but  a  symbol,  is  it  not  the  highest,  tru- 
est symbol  we  can  ever  find? 

in 

Even  when  one  has  accepted  the  new-old 
idea  of  divine  immanence,  the  question  remains 
as  to  the  character  of  the  God  who  is  held  to 
be  immanent.  And  in  our  time  this  question 
is  finding  one  of  its  most  eager  expressions  in 
the  query,  Is  God  an  autocrat  or  a  democrat? 
That  is  to  say,  shall  we  think  of  God  in  terms 
of  autocratic  or  of  democratic  institutions  ? 

The  God  of  a  former  generation  was  an 
autocrat.  His  providence  was  inscrutable, 
his  ways  past  finding  out.  This  was  true  of 
earthly  kings,  why  should  it  not  be  true,  like- 
wise, of  the  heavenly  King?  Eobert  Burns 
made  his  Holy  Willie  say, 

50 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

"O  Thou,  that  in  the  heavens  does  dwell, 
Wha,  as  it  pleases  best  Thysel', 
Sends  ane  to  heaven,  an'  ten  to  hell, 

A'  for  Thy  glory, 
And  no  for  onie  guid  or  ill 

They've  done  afore  Thee! 

•        ••••• 

What  was  I,  or  my  generation 
That  I  should  get  sic  exaltation, 
I  wha  deserv'd  most  just  damnation 

For  broken  laws, 
Sax  thousand  years  ere  my  creation, 

Thro'  Adam's  cause?"* 

There  was  a  time  when  such  words  as  these 
could  have  been  repeated  in  dead  earnest 
without  any  suggestion  of  contemptuous  rail- 
lery. God  was  thought  of  in  terms  of  abso- 
lute, irresponsible  monarchies.  Men  were 
but  puppets  for  the  display  of  divine  power. 

The  age  which  witnessed  this  conception  of 
God  witnessed  all  sorts  of  theological  brutal- 
ities. Mothers  were  told  that  unbaptized 
babies  would  suffer  forever  the  torments  of 
hell.  Fathers  were  told  that  for  prodigal 
sons,  who  died  "out  of  Christ,"  there  was  no 
hope  throughout  all  the  unending  future. 

Such  was  the  conception  of  God  when  the 
Most  High  was  thought  of  in  terms  of  irre- 
sponsible monarchial  institutions. 


By  permission  from  Burns's  Poems,  Every  Man's  Library,  published  by 
E.  P.  Dutton  &  Company. 

51 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

But  monarchism  in  the  political  world  grad- 
ually gave  place  to  democracy.  In  America, 
liberty-loving  colonists  declared  and  achieved 
their  independence,  and  established  a  govern- 
ment "of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the 
people."  In  France,  a  hungry,  ragged,  fren- 
zied mob  battered  down  the  doors  of  the  old 
Bastile,  and  shook  a  continent  with  their 
watchwords,  "  Liberty,  Equality,  Frater- 
nity." And  echoes  of  this  revolution  in  the 
political  world  began  to  be  heard  in  the  the- 
ological world.  Men  who  refused  to  believe 
in  taxation  without  representation  refused 
also  to  believe  in  damnation  without  explana- 
tion. Men  who  had  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  they  had  certain  rights  which  earthly 
kings  were  bound  to  respect,  came  likewise  to 
the  conclusion  that  they  had  certain  rights 
which  even  God  in  heaven  was  bound  to  re- 
spect. And,  now,  at  the  close  of  a  world  war, 
in  which  there  were  more  than  seven  million 
battle  deaths,  men  everywhere  are  beginning 
to  think.  And,  in  steadily  increasing  num- 
bers, they  are  beginning  to  say, 

"Before  the  face  of  God  we  swear, 
As  life  is  good  and  sweet 
Under  the  sun, 

This  horror  shall  not  come  again; 
Never,  never  again 

52 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

Shall  twenty  million  men 

Nor  twenty,  no,  nor  ten 

Leave  all  God  gave  them  in  the  hands  of  one — 

Leave  the  decision  over  peace  and  war 

To  king  or  Kaiser,  president  or  Tsar."6 

The  labors  of  lonely,  persecuted,  freedom-lov- 
ing dreamers  of  many  centuries  have  not  been 
in  vain.  Autocracy  is  doomed.  In  the  politi- 
cal world  not  only,  but  also  in  the  industrial 
world,  autocracy  is  doomed.  It  will  linger  on 
for  a  time.  It  may  reveal  unexpected  vitality. 
But  late  or  soon  autocracy  is  doomed. 

And  if,  both  in  the  political  and  in  the  in- 
dustrial world,  autocracy  is  destined  to  give 
way,  how  long  will  it  be  able  to  maintain  it- 
self in  the  theological  world?  How  long  will 
an  increasingly  democratic  civilization  con- 
tinue to  think  of  God  in  terms  of  autocratic 
institutions,  or  tolerate  any  theological  dogma 
that  is  born  of  autocratic  conceptions  of  God? 
In  the  coming  days,  will  not  God  be  thought  of 
less  and  less  in  terms  of  court  life  and  more 
and  more  in  terms  of  community  life?  And 
will  not  that  amazing  deed  on  Calvary  be 
thought  of  less  and  less  in  terms  of  an  ancient 
sacrificial  system  (itself  the  fruit  of  an  auto- 
cratic God-notion)  and  more  and  more  in 
terms  of  a  willing  sacrifice  on  the  part  of 

s  I  regret  my  inability  to  name  the  author  of  this  poem. 

53 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

men  and  women  who  have  come  to  see  that 
there  can  be  no  progress  without  the  paying 
of  a  price?  The  coming  generation  will  feel 
no  need  of  propitiating  kings,  hnman  or  di- 
vine. It  will  feel  the  need  of  striving  unto 
death  against  sin,  against  lust  and  greed  and 
injustice  and  oppression — everything  which 
drives  the  light  from  women's  eyes  and  laugh- 
ter from  the  lips  of  little  children. 

We  need  to  discover  the  full  significance 
of  Jesus 's  assertion  that  God  is  Father. 
When  men  begin  to  think  of  God,  not  in  terms 
of  kingship,  but  in  terms  of  Fatherhood,  some- 
thing happens — something  of  vast  social  im- 
portance. A  new  sense  of  human  worth  devel- 
ops. This  common  man,  in  overalls,  with  an 
unpronounceable  foreign  name,  is  worth 
something.  He  is  worth  something  to  God! 
He  is  not  merely  an  instrument ;  he  is  an  end 
in  himself,  one  of  the  many,  many  human 
" ends' '  in  whom  God  Almighty  is  supremely 
interested.  He  is  not  merely  a  tool,  a  shovel, 
a  thing;  he  is  a  son  of  God,  heir  of  God,  joint 
heir  with  Jesus  Christ  of  all  the  rights  and 
dignity  of  manhood.  Out  of  this  new-old  con- 
ception of  God  as  Father  is  coming  a  new  un- 
derstanding of  the  sacredness  of  human  life, 
a  new  recognition  of  the  dignity  of  manhood, 
and  so,  a  new  hope  for  the  world. 

54 


TO  BE  SAVED? 


IV 


Another  change  in  the  conception  of  God  is 
to  be  found  in  the  understanding  of  his  human 
interest. 

He  is,  first  of  all,  a  tribal  Deity,  concerned 
with  the  fortunes  of  a  chosen  people.  In  the 
case  of  the  people  of  Israel  he  is  Yahweh,  who 
is  bound  by  a  solemn  covenant  to  devote  him- 
self to  their  welfare,  provided  only  that  they 
fulfill  his  commands.  Other  nations  worship 
other  gods;  it  is  perfectly  proper  that  they 
should  do  so.  There  are  as  many  gods  as 
there  are  nations.  But  let  the  people  of  Israel 
worship  Yahweh,  mighty  in  time  of  war.  And 
when  Joshua  invades  the  land  of  Caanan,  and 
captures  the  city  of  Jericho,  and  burns  it,  and 
massacres  the  entire  civilian  population,  he 
believes  that  Yahweh  is  on  his  side  and  has 
given  him  the  victory. 

This  notion  of  a  tribal  deity  interested  ex- 
clusively in  a  chosen  people  is  singularly  per- 
sistent. Herbert  Spencer  used  to  tell  of  the 
British  sea-captain  who,  being  pursued  by  a 
Dutch  man-of-war,  felt  sure  that  the  wind 
would  change  in  his  favor,  for,  said  he,  ' '  God 
will  never  desert  a  fellow  countryman."8 
Soon  after  the  Great  War  began,  the  British 

6  Quoted  by  Israel  Zangwill  in  The  War  for  the  World,  p.  133. 

55 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  BO 

chaplain  of  the  House  of  Commons  declared 
that ' '  the  killing  of  Germans  is  a  divine  serv- 
ice in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  term";  and  just 
across  the  Channel,  the  German  court 
preacher  returned  thanks  unto  God  for  his 
"holy  wrath  against  the  enemies  of  the  Ger- 
man people.''  Later,  on  both  sides  of  the 
Channel,  and  later  still  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic,  many  persons  surrendered  their  fan- 
cied belief  in  a  universal  God,  and  began  to 
pray  to  a  tribal  God.  Not  alone  in  Germany, 
but  in  England,  in  France,  and  in  America, 
God  was  petitioned  to  be  with  "us"  ("mit 
uns")  and  against  "our  enemies."  Some 
day,  let  us  hope,  we  shall  be  heartily  ashamed 
of  this  lamentable  lapse  from  a  noble  mono- 
theism, not  to  speak  of  a  thoroughgoing 
Christianity. 

But  back  in  Old  Testament  times  there  was 
a  prophet  who  looked  forward  to  the  day 
when  there  would  be  a  highway  out  of  Egypt 
into  Assyria,  and  the  Assyrian  would  come 
into  Egypt,  and  the  Egyptian  into  Assyria, 
and  the  Egyptians  would  worship  with  the 
Assyrians.  * '  In  that  day, ' '  said  he, ' '  shall  Is- 
rael be  the  third  with  Egypt  and  with  Assyria, 
a  blessing  in  the  midst  of  the  earth ;  for  that 
the  Lord  of  hosts  hath  blessed  them,  saying, 
Blessed  be  Egypt  my  people,  and  Assyria  the 
56 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

work  of  my  hands,  and  Israel,  mine  inheri- 
tance."7 William  Adams  Brown  translates 
this  into  modern  phrase.8  For  Israel  he  reads 
Belgium;  for  Egypt,  Germany;  for  Assyria, 
England.  Then  he  imagines  a  Belgian 
prophet,  surveying  the  ruin  and  tragedy  of 
war,  but  looking  forward  to  a  brighter  day, 
and  saying:  "In  that  day  there  shall  be  a 
highway  out  of  Germany  into  England,  and 
the  English  shall  come  to  Germany,  and  the 
Germans  to  England,  and  the  Germans  shall 
worship  with  the  English.  In  that  day  Bel- 
gium shall  be  a  third  with  Germany  and  with 
England,  a  blessing  in  the  midst  of  the  earth ; 
for  that  Jehovah  of  hosts  has  blessed  them, 
saying :  Blessed  be  Germany,  my  people,  and 
England,  the  work  of  my  hands,  and  Bel- 
gium, mine  inheritance."  How  many  of  us 
are  thinking  at  that  height  even  now? 

Back  in  New  Testament  times,  a  still 
greater  Prophet  cast  down  barriers  which, 
through  centuries,  had  been  building,  and  not 
only  healed  a  Gentile 's  servant,  but  interested 
himself  in  a  despised  Samaritan  woman.  And 
the  universalism  latent  in  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  was  magnificently  developed  by  Saint 


1 Isa.  19.  23-25. 

8  See  his  la  Christianity  Practicable?  p.  103,  Charles  Scribner's  Sons, 
publishers. 

57 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

Paul,  who  declared  that  from  a  truly  Chris- 
tian standpoint  there  can  be  neither  Jew  nor 
Greek,  Scythian  nor  barbarian,  bondman  nor 
freeman ;  for  * '  Christ  is  all,  and  in  all.  ■  '* 

This  is  the  conception  of  God  to  which  we 
are  moving.  We  have  had  it  for  a  long  time 
as  an  intellectual  possession.  But  how  many 
of  us  have  it,  even  now,  as  a  working  faith? 
It  is  one  thing  to  stand  for  a  kind  of  ecclesi- 
astical imperialism.  (We  are  all  anxious  to 
have  our  denomination  represented  at  the 
ends  of  the  earth ;  incidentally,  one  may  note 
also  the  fact  that  trade  follows  the  missionary 
as  well  as  the  flag.)  It  is  another  thing  to 
stand  for  a  real  brotherhood  of  mankind. 

We  have  been  contending  in  this  chapter 
that  our  thought  about  God  is  reflected  in  our 
social  institutions.  The  converse  of  this  prop- 
osition is  perhaps  equally  true :  our  social  in- 
stitutions affect,  if  not  determine,  our  concep- 
tion of  God.  In  the  case  of  rare  prophetic 
spirits,  the  thought  of  God  runs  on  in  advance 
of  contemporaneous  social  achievement.  But 
in  the  case  of  the  majority  of  people  God  is 
thought  of  in  terms  of  near-by  institutions. 
And  so  it  may  be  true  that  we  shall  never  de- 
velop a  thoroughgoing  belief  in  a  universal 
God  until  we  have  secured  some  kind  of  real 

•  Col.  3.  11. 

58 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

international  association.  But  if  only  here 
(in  America)  and  now  people  could  be  led  to 
believe  that  God  is  no  more  a  respecter  of 
peoples  than  he  is  of  persons,  how  much  more 
quickly  we  could  get  a  genuine  league  of  na- 
tions, seeking  to  secure  justice  and  to  main- 
tain the  peace  of  the  world ! 


The  God  of  a  former  generation  was  a  Cre- 
ator who  had  created.  The  God  of  our  pres- 
ent conception  is  a  Creator  who  is  still  creat- 
ing. That  is  to  say,  the  universe,  as  we  now 
think  of  it,  is  still  in  the  making. 

In  a  book10  which  has  been  widely  read  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells 
throws  out  the  suggestion  of  a  finite  Deity. 
God,  says  Mr.  Wells,  is  not  omnipotent,  nor 
omniscient,  nor  omnipresent.  There  are  many 
things  he  cannot  do,  many  things  he  does  not 
know,  many  places  in  which  he  is  not.  He  is 
not  coextensive  with  the  universe,  and  for  the 
universe  he  is  not  responsible.  Somewhere, 
in  the  dawn  of  mankind,  he  had  a  beginning, 
and  as  mankind  grows,  he  grows.  The  God 
of  Mr.  Wells  is  not  the  Absolute  of  philosophy 
nor  the  Creator  of  Hebrew  theology.  He  is  a 
supremely  great  and  good  Spirit,  a  loving  and 

"The  Invisible  King. 

59 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

lovable  Personality,  who  may  be  known  as 
friend  knows  friend,  and  who  is  "struggling 
with  us,  and  in  our  behalf,  against  all  that 
threatens  us,  all  that  curses  us,  all  that  de- 
stroys us,  and  makes  us  afraid. ' '  As  for  what 
lies  beyond  God,  Mr.  Wells  calls  it  The  Veiled 
Being,  and  affirms  that  we  do  not  know  any- 
thing about  it;  that,  in  all  probability,  we 
never  shall.  And  Mr.  Wells  comes  to  this 
somewhat  startling  conclusion  because  he 
wants  to  acquit  the  Lord  of  Ages  of  all  re- 
sponsibility for  that  awful  catastrophe  which 
has  deluged  Europe  with  grief  and  blood. 

As  for  myself,  there  are  two  things  in  this 
connection  which  I  feel  impelled  to  say. 

I  cannot  rest  content  with  Mr.  Wells's  be- 
lief in  a  God  who  is  something  less  than  all 
reality.  For  me,  God  must  be  everywhere,  or 
nowhere — in  the  farthest  star  and  in  the 
flower  at  my  feet.  Soon  or  late  we  must  deal 
with  the  Absolute.  If  we  cannot  trust  the 
Absolute ;  if  we  know,  and  can  know,  nothing 
about  it,  how  can  we  feel  any  assurance  that 
the  Absolute  will  never  prove  too  much  for 
our  God  1  Shall  we  ever  find  a  working  faith, 
an  abiding  peace,  unless  we  can  venture  out 
upon  the  belief  that  God  is  all  and  in  all  ? 

But  this  also  I  believe:  the  world  is  not 
made ;  it  is  still  in  the  making.    How  can  one 

60 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

believe  that  our  world  is  a  finished  product — 
a  world  that  has  cancer  and  insanity  in  it, 
child-labor  and  war?  God  has  not  yet  at- 
tained. He  has  not  yet  become  perfect,  if  one 
may  be  permitted  to  mean  by  "  perfection ' ' 
the  completion  of  a  task.  But  God  is  pressing 
on  toward  the  goal  which  has  been  revealed 
to  us  in  Jesus.  For  me,  Jesus  is  vastly  signifi- 
cant. I  cannot  believe  that  he  represents 
merely  a  transient  achievement,  a  glorious  ac- 
cident, a  flash  in  the  pan.  What  I  do  believe 
is  that  what  we  see  in  Jesus  represents  some- 
thing which  dwells  eternally  in  the  heart  of 
God. 

The  world  is  not  yet  made.  Who  could  wish 
that  it  were  otherwise?  In  a  ready-made 
world  there  would  be  nothing  left  for  men 
themselves  to  do — no  problems  to  solve,  no 
hardship  to  endure,  no  risks  to  run,  and  so, 
no  adventure,  no  real  joy.  As  it  is,  we  can 
help  God.  He  needs  our  help.  Even  the  hum- 
blest among  us  may  help  a  little.  And  is  it 
possible  to  conceive  of  any  greater  joy  than 
that  which  comes  to  a  man  who  is  consciously 
and  eagerly  cooperating  with  God  in  the  com- 
pletion of  his  world-task? 

What  I  feel  the  need  of  believing  and  try  to 
believe  is  this:  the  battle  in  which  God  and 
mankind  are  engaged  is  a  real  battle.   As  Pro- 

61 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

fessor  William  James  once  declared,  "If  it  is 
not  a  real  fight,  it  at  least  feels  like  one. ' '  Brit 
the  outcome  is  sure.  God  is  able.  God, 
eventually,  supported  by  forward-looking  men 
and  women,  will  win. 


62 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

CHAPTER  in 

SIN 

The  aim  of  this  chapter  is  to  trace  the  his- 
toric development  of  the  conception  of  sin  for 
the  purpose  of  discovering  what  manner  of 
man  is  a  sinner  in  the  light  of  the  highest  ethi- 
cal standards  which  the  race  has  evolved. 


Let  us  suppose  that  in  Central  Africa,  a  few 
days  ago,  a  half-naked  savage  touched  a 
corpse.  Immediately,  in  the  eyes  of  his  tribe 
and  in  his  own  eyes,  he  became  a  sinner.  For 
among  primitive  peoples  the  touching  of  a 
corpse  is  taboo;  and  to  disregard  the  taboo 
law  is  to  sin.  The  forbidden  act  may  or  may 
not  be  inherently  immoral.  Generally  it  is 
not.  It  does,  however,  serve  a  moral  purpose 
by  forcing  the  individual  to  decide  whether 
he  will  conform  to  the  tribal  demand  or  dis- 
regard it,  and  so  it  registers  the  feeble  begin- 
ning of  moral  development. 

II 

On  a  somewhat  higher  level  of  culture,  sin 
is  anything  which  is  offensive  to  the  gods.  And 

63 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

for  ancient  man  it  was  difficult  to  know  just 
what  was  offensive  to  the  gods.  One  of  the 
hymns  used  by  the  Babylonians  went  like  this : 

What,  however,  seems  good  to  one,  to  a  god  may  be  dis- 
pleasing. 

What  is  spurned  by  oneself  may  find  favor  with  a  god. 

Who  is  there  that  can  grasp  the  will  of  the  gods  in 
heaven? 

The  plan  of  a  god  is  full  of  mystery — who  can  under- 
stand it? 

How  can  mortals  learn  the  ways  of  a  god? 

He  who  is  still  alive  at  evening  is  dead  the  next 
morning; 

In  an  instant  he  is  cast  into  grief,  of  a  sudden  he  is 
crushed.1 

In  the  Old  Testament,  also,  one  comes  now 
and  then  upon  some  incident  which  must  have 
filled  the  minds  of  those  ancient  Hebrews  with 
bewilderment  and  consternation.  There  is, 
for  example,  the  story  of  Uzzah.2  This  young 
Hebrew  and  Ahio,  his  brother,  were  taking 
the  sacred  ark  from  one  city  to  another.  They 
had  placed  it  upon  a  new  cart  drawn  by  two 
oxen.  At  one  point  along  the  road  the  oxen 
stumbled.  The  ark  tilted.  Uzzah  instinct- 
ively reached  forth  his  hand  to  steady  it. 
That  moment  he  fell  down  dead.  What  a  sin- 
gular concurrence!  What  did  it  mean?  The 
ancient  historian  who  records  this  incident 

1  Quoted  by  H.  Wheeler  Robinson  in  The  Religious  Ideas  of  the  Old 
Testament,  p.  159.  The  translation  is  Jastrow's  in  Religious  Belief  in 
Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  333.  *  2  Sam.  6.  3ff. 

64 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

ventures  an  explanation.  He  says,  "The  an- 
ger of  Jehovah  was  kindled  against  Uzzah, 
and  God  smote  him  for  his  error,  and  there  he 
died  before  the  ark  of  Jehovah."  He  also 
says,  naively  enough,  that  David  was  dis- 
pleased because  Jehovah  had  thus  broken 
forth  on  Uzzah,  and  that  David  was  afraid  of 
Jehovah  that  day.  There  is  the  story,  also, 
of  the  census  that  was  taken  in  Israel  and 
Judah.8  The  chronicler  says  that  Jehovah 
put  it  into  the  mind  of  David  to  take  this 
census,  but  that  when  it  was  taken  the  nation 
suddenly  found  itself  in  the  grip  of  an  un- 
precedented plague  which  in  a  few  days  wiped 
out  seventy  thousand  people.  Here,  again,  is 
a  singular  coincidence.  What  does  it  mean? 
The  historian  thinks  that  for  some  reason  Je- 
hovah changed  his  mind  and  became  very  an- 
gry when  his  order  was  carried  out.  And  he 
says  that  David  built  an  altar  unto  Jehovah, 
and  offered  burnt  offerings  and  peace  offer- 
ings, and  that  then  the  plague  was  stayed. 

The  gods  in  whom  ancient  men  believed 
were  as  autocratic,  as  arbitrary,  and  capri- 
cious as  were  the  tribal  chiefs  who  exercised 
earthly  authority  over  them.  The  god,  there- 
fore, must  be  propitiated.  He  must  be  kept  in 
good  humor.    His  ruffled  feelings  must  be 

» 2  Sain.  24.  lOflf. 

65 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUKCH  DO 

soothed  by  the  odor  of  incense.  In  ancient 
man  the  consciousness  of  sin  was  just  this 
dread  feeling  that  in  some  way  he  had  dis- 
pleased the  god,  and  his  constant  question 
was,  What  must  I  do  to  avert  his  anger? 
What  can  I  do  to  secure  his  favor  1 

in 

In  the  case  of  the  Hebrew  people  the  many 
gods  give  place  to  one  God — Yahweh — where- 
upon sin  becomes  defined  as  rebellion.  It  is 
lese  majesty — a  crime  against  the  sovereign. 
Now  and  then  some  prophet  insists  that  sin 
is  involved  in  any  wrong  relationship  to  fel- 
low man,  and  not  only  in  a  wrong  relationship 
to  God;  or  that  a  sin  has  been  committed 
against  God  because  an  injury  has  been  done 
to  some  human  soul.  But  this  connection  is 
not  made  by  the  multitude.  The  majority  are 
concerned  only  about  God,  what  he  may  think 
and  do,  not  about  the  human  victim  of  an  evil 
deed. 

Interesting  indeed  (and  discouraging)  are 
the  survivals  of  this  early  conception  of  sin 
as  lese  majesty.  In  his  Theology  for  a  Social 
Gospel,  Professor  Eauschenbusch  relates  an 
incident  of  which  he  learned  from  a  health 
officer  in  Toronto.  In  Toronto,  if  milk  is 
found  to  be  dirty,  the  cans  are  emptied  by  the 
66 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

inspector  and  then  marked  with  a  large  red 
label.  "When  these  cans  bearing  the  scarlet 
letter  are  returned  to  their  owner,  the  whole 
community  is  informed  of  his  disgrace.  One 
day  a  Mennonite  farmer  found  his  cans  thus 
labeled.  His  ire  was  aroused.  He  lost  his 
temper  and  forgot,  for  the  moment,  his  Men- 
nonite vow.  He  swore  "an  unscriptural 
oath."  His  voice  was  heard.  He  was 
brought  before  the  church,  and  tried,  and 
found  guilty,  and  excommunicated;  not  be- 
cause he  had  threatened  the  lives  of  Toronto 's 
babies  by  peddling  dirty  milk,  but  because  he 
had  taken  the  name  of  God  in  vain ! 

When  sin  is  thought  of  as  lese  majesty,  a 
swaggering  Prussian  officer  may  run  a  lame 
shoemaker  through  with  his  saber  and  get  off 
with  a  reprimand;  but  were  he  to  utter  a 
single  unguarded  word  reflecting  upon  the 
character  of  a  heaven-appointed  emperor,  he 
would  be  dealt  with  in  summary  fashion. 

The  connection  between  injury  done  to 
one's  God  and  injury  done  to  one's  neighbor 
is  a  connection  which  humanity  has  been  slow 
to  make. 

IV 

The  tendency,  likewise,  to  identify  sin  with 
some  act  not  in  itself  immoral  rather  than 
67 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

with  acts  which  are  inherently  immoral  is 
significantly  persistent.  Professor  Robinson4 
has  noted  the  fact  that  even  Ezekiel  includes 
a  purely  physical  reference  in  a  list  of  sins. 
Says  this  undeniably  great  prophet,  "If  a 
man  be  just,  and  do  that  which  is  lawful  and 
right,  and  hath  not  eaten  upon  the  mountains, 
.  .  .  neither  hath  defiled  his  neighbor's  wife, 
.  .  .  and  hath  not  wronged  any,  but  hath  re- 
stored to  the  debtor  his  pledge,  hath  spoiled 
none  by  violence,  by  robbery,  hath  given  his 
bread  to  the  hungry,  and  hath  covered  the 
naked  with  a  garment ;  ...  he  is  just,  he  shall 
surely  live."  It  is  a  splendid  passage,  but 
how  curious  this  reference  to  eating  upon  the 
mountains  in  the  same  breath  with  a  solemn 
adjuration  not  to  defile  a  neighbor's  wife  nor 
take  anything  by  robbery. 

A  similar  instance  is  presented  by  the  fa- 
mous nineteenth  chapter  of  Leviticus.  Here 
one  finds  the  ethical  expression  of  the  priestly 
mind  at  its  best.  And  it  is  a  good  best.  Con- 
sider this :  "When  ye  reap  the  harvest  of  your 
land,  thou  shalt  not  wholly  reap  the  corners 
of  thy  field,  neither  shalt  thou  gather  the 
gleaning  of  thy  harvest.  And  thou  shalt  not 
glean  thy  vineyard,  neither  shalt  thou  gather 
the  fallen  fruit  of  thy  vineyard;  thou  shalt 

« In  "The  Religious  Ideas  of  the  Old  Testament,"  p.  163. 

68 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

leave  them  for  the  poor  and  for  the 
stranger."5  Consider  also  this:  "If  a  stran- 
ger sojourn  with  thee  in  your  land,  ye  shall 
not  do  him  wrong.  The  stranger  that  sojourn- 
eth  with  you  shall  be  unto  you  as  the  home- 
born  among  you,  and  thou  shalt  love  him  as 
thyself;  for  ye  were  strangers  in  the  land  of 
Egypt."6  (Not  bad  counsel  even  for  pres- 
ent-day Americans.)  And  the  seventeenth 
verse  reads  thus:  "Thou  shalt  not  hate  thy 
brother  in  thine  heart. . .  .  Thou  shalt  not  take 
vengeance,  nor  bear  any  grudge  against  the 
children  of  thy  people,  but  thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself."  But  in  this  same  nine- 
teenth chapter  of  the  book  of  Leviticus,  you 
find  this :  ' '  There  shall  not  come  upon  thee  a 
garment  of  two  kinds  of  stuff  mingled  to- 
gether. ' '  And  you  find  this :  "  Ye  shall  not  eat 
anything  with  the  blood."  Moreover,  when 
you  consider  Leviticus  as  a  whole,  you  are  im- 
pressed by  the  fact  that  chief  attention  is  be- 
ing given,  not  to  moral  considerations,  but  to 
ceremonial  directions. 

Even  in  Jesus 's  day,  a  priest  must  not  touch 
a  dead  mouse,  and  neither  priest  nor  layman 
must  ever  eat  pig  or  lobster  or  rabbit.  Monte- 
fiore  insists  that  the  rabbis  of  Jesus 's  day  did 

* Lev.  19.  9,  10. 

*  Ibid.,  verses  33  and  34. 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

realize  that  moral  laws  were  more  important 
than  ceremonial  laws.  But  he  feels  obliged  to 
add  this : ' '  However  much  the  good  sense  and 
religious  feeling  of  the  rabbis  may  have  led 
them  to  realize  that  to  love  mercy  was  more 
important  than  to  abstain  from  eating  rab- 
bits, it  would  not  have  entered  their  heads  to 
argue  that  as  long  as  you  were  merciful  and 
loving  you  might  be  allowed  to  eat  them." 
Is  it  not  possible  that  some  of  them  argued  that 
even  though  you  were  not  merciful  and  lov- 
ing, provided  only  you  did  not  eat  rabbits,  you 
might  regard  yourself  with  a  considerable  de- 
gree of  complacency?  Jesus  himself  is  au- 
thority for  the  statement  that  some  of  his  con- 
temporaries tithed  mint  and  anise  and  cummin 
but  neglected  the  weightier  matters  of  justice 
and  mercy  and  faith.  There  were  men,  in  his 
day,  who  refused  to  set  foot  on  the  pavement 
of  a  Gentile  courtroom  through  fear  of  cere- 
monial defilement,  yet  these  very  men,  on  that 
same  day,  did  not  hesitate  to  bring  to  pass  a 
judicial  murder. 

Closely  akin  to  this  convenient  emphasis 
upon  non-moral  forms  of  activity  are  the  ever- 
recurrent  legalisms  of  religious  history.  It  is 
very  much  easier  to  follow  rules,  even  multi- 
tudinous and  inconvenient  rules,  than  it  is  to 
be  kind  and  thoughtful  and  sweet-spirited.  In 
70 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

New  Testament  times  there  were  men  who  en- 
deavored to  follow  to  the  letter  every  rule  for 
the  observance  of  the  Sabbath — and  the  Sab- 
batical rules  were  many  and  troublesome.  But 
the  New  Testament  story  does  not  give  one 
the  impression  that  these  men  were  especially 
easy  to  get  along  with. 

In  Scotch  Presbyterianism,  in  New  England 
Puritanism,  in  nineteenth-century  Methodism 
(to  mention  but  a  few  of  many  cases)  legalism 
was  revived — with  much  the  same  result.  It 
was  easier  to  endure  a  Scotch  Sunday  than  it 
was  to  refuse  Scotch  whisky.  It  was  easier 
to  sit  for  two  solid  hours  in  a  Puritan  meet- 
inghouse, listening  to  a  perfectly  solid  and 
juiceless  discourse,  than  it  was  to  be  chari- 
table toward  human  frailty  or  tolerant  of  the 
opinions  of  others.  It  was,  and  is,  easier  to 
refrain  from  dancing,  card-playing,  and  the- 
ater-going, than  it  is  to  be  just  and  generous 
and  honest  and  unselfish.  And  if  a  man  can 
get  a  reputation  for  goodness  merely  by  re- 
fraining from  certain  amusements,  or  by  go- 
ing to  church,  or  by  making  himself  (and 
others)  miserable  on  the  first  day  of  the  week, 
he  is,  I  think  one  may  conclude,  at  least  more 
apt  to  choose  this  path  to  " goodness* '  rather 
than  the  hard  and  stony  road  of  moral  cul- 
ture and  spiritual  conquest. 
71 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 


But  the  conception  of  sin  does  not  remain 
on  this  low  level  where  sin  is  identified  with 
failure  to  fulfill  some  non-moral  requirement 
or  some  legal  enactment.  Again,  of  course, 
we  are  speaking  historically.  In  the  case  of 
many  persons,  even  now,  there  is  little  sense 
of  sin  apart  from  the  knowledge  of  some  legal 
infraction.  Provided  only  they  do  not  violate 
any  law  of  the  land,  a  considerable  number  of 
people  are  able  to  live  on  pretty  good  terms 
with  themselves.  But,  historically  speaking, 
the  conception  of  sin  rises  above  the  low  level 
to  which  reference  has  just  been  made. 

This  is  evident  to  anyone  who  reads  with 
care  the  great  Hebrew  prophets.  Indeed, 
even  a  cursory  examination  of  the  utterances 
of  these  extraordinary  Hebrew  preachers  will 
bring  one  into  close  contact  with  ethical 
reality. 

Let  any  man  whose  conscience  is  permitting 
him  to  draw  dividends  from  a  crooked  enter- 
prise listen  to  Habakkuk  saying,  "Woe  to 
him  that  getteth  an  evil  gain  for  his  house, 
that  he  may  set  his  nest  on  high,  that  he  may 
be  delivered  from  the  hand  of  evil. ' ,T 

Americans  who  have  been  in  London  will 


» Hab.  2.  9. 

72 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

remember  the  beautiful  little  parks  sur- 
rounded by  splendid  residences.  These  parks 
are  inclosed  with  an  iron  fence,  the  gate  of 
which  is  kept  locked.  Keys  to  the  lock  are 
possessed  only  by  the  privileged  people  who 
dwell  in  the  splendid  residences.  And,  as 
everyone  knows,  England  has  suffered  keenly 
from  landlordism,  the  ownership  of  great  es- 
tates by  gentlemen  who  used  them  as  hunt- 
ing grounds  at  certain  seasons  of  the  year. 
Let  lords  of  the  land  listen  to  Isaiah  saying, 
"Woe  unto  them  that  join  house  to  house,  who 
lay  field  to  field,  till  there  be  no  room."8 

Let  American  landlords  whose  consciences 
are  permitting  them  to  raise  rents  far  beyond 
the  figure  which  is  necessary  to  secure  a  fair 
return  on  their  investment — let  them  consider 
Micah's  scathing  arraignment  of  the  men  who, 
in  his  day,  did  likewise.9  And  let  the  profiteer 
whose  drugged  conscience  is  permitting  him 
to  levy  a  tax  upon  the  necessities  of  a  nation 
consider  what  Amos  said  to  the  profiteers  of 
his  day  who  "took  exactions  of  wheat,"  and 
ground  the  faces  of  the  poor.  "Ye  have  built 
houses  of  hewn  stone,"  declared  Amos,  "but 
ye  shall  not  dwell  in  them"10 — a  saying  which, 


" Isa.  5.  8. 
•  Mioah  2.  0. 
»  Amos  5.  llff. 


73 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

if  littered  in  America  at  this  present  time,  by 
any  alien  with  a  Russian  name,  would  prob- 
ably lead  to  his  deportation  without  trial. 

Micah  has  an  interesting  passage  in  which 
he  says,  ' l  The  prince  asketh,  and  the  judge  is 
ready  for  a  reward;  and  the  great  man,  he 
uttereth  the  mischief  of  his  soul;  thus  they 
weave  it  together. "  The  man  whom  Micah 
calls  a  prince  would  be  known  to-day  as  a 
politician.  What  the  politician  asks  for, 
Micah  does  not  say.  But  do  we  need  to  be 
told?  And  the  judge,  he  tells  us,  is  ready  for 
a  reward.  (Was  it  from  Micah  that  Mr. 
Roosevelt  got  his  thunder?)  We  are  left  in 
doubt  as  to  the  evil  desire  of  the  great  man's 
soul,  what  it  was.  (Were  he  living  to-day, 
we  might  fancy  that  it  had  something  to  do 
with  lax  enforcement  of  the  prohibition  law, 
or,  perchance,  with  the  exploitation  of  Mex- 
ico under  governmental  protection.)  But, 
whatever  it  was  that  the  great  man  wanted  he 
managed  to  get.  The  great  man  financed  the 
politician;  the  politician  looked  after  the  in- 
terests of  the  great  man ;  the  judge,  for  a  con- 
sideration, was  willing  to  oblige  both  gentle- 
men; and  the  people,  no  doubt,  paid  the  ulti- 
mate bill. 

Well,  Micah  stood  in  the  presence  of 
such  men  and  represented  Jehovah  as  hav- 
74 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

ing  a  contention  with  his  people.  "What  had 
he  done  to  them  that  they  should  so  sin  against 
him?  Then  this  rugged  preacher  represented 
the  people  as  inquiring  what  they  must  do  to 
get  right  with  Jehovah.  Should  they  come 
before  him  with  ordinary  offerings — calves 
a  year  old?  Or  should  they  bring  unto  him 
extraordinary  gifts — thousands  of  rams,  tens 
of  thousands  of  rivers  of  oil?  Or,  if  even 
such  gifts  were  inadequate,  should  they  offer 
unto  him  their  own  children — the  fruit  of 
their  body  for  the  sin  of  their  soul?  (Of 
how  many  men,  even  now,  it  appears  to  be 
true  that  they  are  readier  to  give  their  sons 
to  the  nation  in  time  of  war  than  they  are  to 
give  a  square  deal  to  the  nation  in  time  of 
peace?)  Finally,  when  he  had  made  the  sit- 
uation perfectly  clear  to  his  audience,  Micah 
presented  his  own  answer.  "Not  so,"  he 
cried,  "what  doth  Jehovah  require  of  thee  but 
to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy,  and  walk  humbly 
with  thy  God?,,u 

It  was  as  though  some  modern  preacher 
should  stand  in  Wall  Street  and  say  to  the 
passersby,  "What  does  God  require  of  you? 
Spectacular  contributions  to  philanthropic 
enterprises — charity  as  a  substitute  for  jus- 
tice?   What  does  God  require  of  you?    Pious 

«  Mioah  6.  6-8. 

75 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

appeals  for  an  old-fashioned  revival  of  reli- 
gion? (Even  the  Wall  Street  Journal  turns 
preacher,  at  times,  and  pleads  for  an  old- 
fashioned  revival  of  religion,  blissfully  igno- 
rant of  the  fact  that  if  ever  there  should  be  a 
revival  of  anything  which  Jeremiah  or  Jesus 
would  pronounce  religion,  Wall  Street  would 
be  thrown  into  a  panic.)  What  does  God  re- 
quire of  you?  Pseudo-patriotic  appeals  for  a 
one  hundred  per  cent  Americanism — ameri- 
canism  spelled  with  a  small  'a'  and  emptied 
of  all  international  vision  and  concern?  What 
does  God  require  of  American  capital  and 
American  labor  in  this  critical  hour  in  the 
world's  life?  What  but  to  do  justly,  to  show 
mercy,  and  walk  humbly  with  Him  who  is  God 
the  Father  of  all  mankind  ? '  * 

But  when  we  say  that  the  conception  of  sin 
has  risen  above  the  low  level  where  it  means 
little  more  than  failure  to  meet  some  non- 
moral  requirement  or  some  legal  enactment, 
we  are  thinking  preeminently  of  Jesus.  It 
was  Jesus  who  said  that  there  is  nothing  from 
without  the  man  which,  going  into  him,  can 
defile  him;  but  the  things  which  proceed  out 
of  the  man  are  the  things  which  defile  him.12 
Out  of  the  heart,  said  he,  come  forth  evil 
thoughts,  murders,  adulteries,  fornications, 

»  See  Matt.  15.  18. 

76 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

thefts,  false  witness,  railings.  Once  that  has 
been  spoken  and  understood,  it  becomes  im- 
possible to  say,  in  one  breath,  "Thou  shalt  not 
defile  thy  neighbor's  wife,  nor  eat  upon  the 
holy  mountain. ' '  It  becomes  equally  prepos- 
terous to  say,  in  the  same  sentence,  "Thou 
shalt  not  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor,  nor  eat 
rabbits." 

Jesus  went  to  the  very  root  of  the  matter — 
the  inner  attitude.  If  your  inner  attitude  is 
wrong,  then,  according  to  Jesus,  you  are 
wrong,  regardless  of  the  character  of  your 
occasional  acts.  With  Jesus  the  question  of 
first  importance  was  not,  What  are  you  doing 
at  any  particular  moment  f  but,  In  what  direc- 
tion are  you  going?  There  were  many  pious 
people  who  thought  that  the  new  teacher  was 
upsetting  every  reasonable  standard  of  right 
and  wrong.  He  sat  down  and  ate  with  publi- 
cans and  sinners,  people  who  did  not  bear  a 
good  name !  Yet  for  highly  respected  Phari- 
sees he  had  only  words  of  scorn.  He  revealed 
no  trace  of  anger  in  the  presence  of  a  woman 
taken  in  adultery.  But  his  eyes  flashed  fire 
in  the  presence  of  the  well-known  citizens  who 
had  made  of  her  a  public  spectacle,  and  the 
instrument  of  an  ulterior  purpose.  Did  Jesus, 
then,  condone  what  we  commonly  speak  of  as 
immorality?    By  no  means!    He  condemned 

77 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

not  only  murder  but  hate ;  not  only  adultery 
but  lust.  But  in  the  thought  of  Jesus,  publi- 
cans and  sinners  who  had  some  desire  for  a 
better  life  gave  more  promise  of  moral  devel- 
opment than  did  the  self-satisfied  Pharisees 
who  despised  them.  And  a  woman  taken  in 
adultery,  but  crushed  and  penitent,  was  nearer 
purity  than  were  the  superficially  immaculate 
accusers  whose  inner  attitude  was  plainly  such 
that  only  a  favoring  opportunity  was  needed 
to  cause  them  to  sidestep  into  sin. 

Said  Jesus,  "Except  ye  turn,  and  become  as 
little  children,  ye  shall  in  no  wise  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  heaven. ' ,1S  What  did  he  mean? 
He  could  not  have  meant  that  a  three-year- 
old  child  has  more  to  his  credit  in  the  way  of 
moral  attainment  than  has  the  average,  de- 
cent-lived, middle-aged  man.  But  if  a  middle- 
aged  man  should  be  satisfied  with  his  moral 
attainments,  there  would  be  vastly  more  of 
promise  in  a  little  child  than  in  him.  For  the 
child  would  be  teachable,  eager  to  learn; 
whereas  the  self-satisfied  adult  would  have  be- 
come a  moral  fossil.  Jesus  is  concerned  not 
so  much  with  moral  attainment  as  with  moral 
direction.  In  his  thought  the  supreme  sin  is 
just  moral  complacency,  a  selfish,  satisfied, 
unteachable  spirit. 

m  Matt.  18.  3. 

78 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

VI 

A  highly  developed  conception  of  sin  has 
one  other  aspect  which  claims  attention.  Ac- 
cording to  a  doctrinal  statement  with  which 
many  of  us  in  our  youth  were  familiar,  God 
created  in  Adam  a  perfect  man,  and  placed 
in  the  hands  of  this  remotest  ancestor  of  the 
human  race  the  dread  responsibility  for  hu- 
man destiny.  Had  Adam  remained  perfect — 
well,  the  statement  did  not  say  what  would 
have  happened.  But  Adam  sinned,  and  in  his 
sin,  not  merely  in  the  consequences  of  it,  but 
even  in  the  guilt  of  it,  the  whole  race  of  men 
has  become  involved.  Now,  some  of  us  can  no 
longer  believe  in  any  such  fall  from  a  state  of 
pristine  purity  as  this  doctrine  presupposes. 
Nor  can  we  believe  that  any  man  has  resting 
upon  him  the  guilt  of  his  ancestors.  Guilt 
is  personal,  and  cannot  be  transferred  like 
a  physical  commodity.  But  in  this  we  can  and 
do  believe:  a  continuity  of  evil,  stretching 
back  through  the  centuries,  and  out  over  the 
nations.  Beyond  doubt  we  are  suffering  to- 
day in  consequence  of  the  sins  and  mistakes 
of  the  millions  who  have  preceded  us ;  suffer- 
ing in  our  bodies,  our  minds,  our  ideas  and 
ideals,  our  social  and  political  institutions. 

And  this  also  we  may  believe:  we  are  not 
79 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

only  inheritors  of  evil,  we  are  participators  in 
evil.  A  modern  prophet14  has  dedicated  one 
of  his  books  ' '  To  the  millions  who  toil  without 
hope  that  the  thousands  may  enjoy  without 
thought. ' '  Perhaps  there  is  a  bit  of  injustice 
in  this;  certainly  there  is  a  touch  of  bitter- 
ness. But  we  who  are  profiting  by  the  sweat 
and  toil  and  tears  of  others ;  we  who,  not  de- 
liberately perhaps,  but  none  the  less  actually, 
are  profiting  at  the  expense  of  others,  how 
can  we  escape  a  sense  of  condemnation  in  the 
presence  of  a  social  order  so  full  of  injustice 
as  our  order  is? 

Not  long  ago,  in  the  city  of  Chicago,  a  gun- 
man was  murdered  by  another  gunman,  and 
in  the  Chicago  Evening  Post  an  editorial  de- 
clared that  for  the  tragic  career  of  this  dead 
gangster  the  whole  city  was  responsible.  Chi- 
cago had  permitted  him  to  grow  up  unbe- 
friended  on  the  city  streets,  and  instead  of 
cultivating  the  good  in  him  had  allowed  the 
evil  in  him  to  develop  unchecked.  There  is 
much  else  beside  the  ill-starred  career  of  an 
occasional  gunman  for  which  the  community 
as  a  whole  is  responsible.  For  graft  and  in- 
efficiency in  the  city  hall ;  for  the  miseducation 
or,  at  best,  the  inadequate  education  of  chil- 
dren ;  for  its  own  exploitation  by  certain  pred- 

M  Vedder  in  The  Gospel  of  Jesua  and  the  Problems  of  Democracy. 

80 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

atory  groups — for  all  this,  and  more  than  this, 
many  a  community,  as  a  whole,  is  responsible. 

This  recognition  of  corporate  guilt  is  not 
anything  new  under  the  sun.  Evidence  of  it 
may  be  found  on  page  after  page  of  the  Old 
Testament.  But  among  modern  men  it  rep- 
resents a  comparatively  recent  revival,  and 
even  now  is  not  as  widespread  as  one  could 
wish.  For  not  until  all  the  people  begin  to 
feel  responsibility  for  community  conditions 
will  it  be  possible  for  communities  to  be 
saved. 

If  only  we  could  get  clearly  before  us  that 
better  civilization  which  every  great  pro- 
phetic spirit  has  seen  from  afar! — a  truer 
world,  in  which  every  man,  woman,  and  little 
child  would  be  given  a  fair  chance  for  self- 
development;  in  which  men  would  look  upon 
one  another  not  as  foes,  nor  as  competitors, 
but  as  friends  and  brothers;  in  which  love 
would  be  the  ruling  principle,  and  even- 
handed  justice  would  be  meted  out  to  every 
humblest  son  of  toil.  To  say  that  this  is  an 
ideal  for  whose  realization  we  must  long  wait 
and  labor  is  to  speak  soberly.  But  to  say  that 
this  represents  an  ideal  which  can  never  be 
realized  is  to  become  faint  of  heart.  And  to 
jeopardize  its  realization  by  greed  or  by 
hatred,  by  cowardice  or  by  complacency,  is  to 
81 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

Become  corrupt  of  heart.  What  is  sin?  Sin 
is  treachery  to  a  great  ideal.  It  is  the  Bene- 
dict Arnold  of  the  human  soul  betraying  the 
possibility  of  a  better  world.  It  is  the  selfish, 
anti-social,  cowardly,  complacent  attitude 
which  would  prevent  forever  the  dawning  of 
that  brighter  day  for  which  all  earth's  fairest 
spirits  have  lived  and  labored. 


82 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

CHAPTEE  IV 

»  SALVATION 

We  saw  in  the  last  chapter  that  for  primi- 
tive man  the  sense  of  sin  was  just  the  uneasy 
conviction  that,  having  violated  some  taboo 
law,  he  had  offended  the  spirits.  The  world 
was  full  of  spirits  having  the  same  likes  and 
dislikes  as  human  spirits.  Some  of  these  spir- 
its were  comparatively  powerless,  and  there- 
fore harmless,  and  therefore  not  to  be  espe- 
cially concerned  about.  But  others  were  very 
powerful,  and  therefore  capable  of  inflicting 
injury,  and  therefore  needing  to  be  propiti- 
ated. Surrounded  by  these  powerful  spirits, 
primitive  man  was  afraid.  Unintentionally, 
even  unknowingly,  he  might  touch  something 
that  was  taboo ;  and  then  they  might  give  him 
bad  luck  in  the  chase,  or  poison  his  cattle,  or 
cause  his  wife  to  become  unfaithful  to  him,  or 
strike  him  dead  with  a  bolt  of  fire.  He  was 
anxious,  therefore,  to  keep  on  good  terms  with 
these  powerful  spirits ;  and  in  every  way  that 
suggested  itself  to  his  dark  and  troubled 
mind  he  endeavored  to  appease  their  wrath 
and  win  their  favor.  And  so,  for  primitive 
83 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

man,  salvation  meant  the  sense  of  security 
which  came  with  the  belief  that,  as  the  result 
of  certain  rites  and  offerings,  the  anger  of  the 
spirits  had  been  turned  aside  and  their  good 
will  secured. 

I 

It  was,  I  suppose,  to  be  expected  that  this 
primitive  notion  of  salvation  should  persist 
for  a  long  time.  It,  at  any  rate,  has  done  so, 
and  traces  of  it  may  be  found  in  popular 
thought  even  now. 

The  idea  that  the  Supernatural  needs  to  be 
propitiated  does  not  appear  among  the  He- 
brew people  (if  we  may  judge  from  the  Old 
Testament  literature)  until  a  relatively  late 
date.  Their  earliest  sacrifices  were  probably 
meals  at  which  the  deity  was  invited  to  be 
present  as  the  guest  of  the  worshipers.  At 
these  sacrificial  meals,  the  flesh  of  the  offer- 
ing was  eaten  by  the  worshipers,  after  it  had 
been  drained  of  the  blood,  which  was  reserved 
for  the  deity.  Later,  the  offerings,  called 
" burnt  offerings,' '  were  entirely  consumed 
upon  the  altar.  "Here  the  underlying  idea 
would  seem  to  be  the  conveyance  of  a  gift  to 
the  deity  by  the  convenient  means  of  a  fire, 
which  turns  it  into  rising  smoke. ' ,x   But,  after 

1  Robinson,  in  The  Religious  Ideas  of  the  Old  Testament,  p.  144,  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons,  publishers. 

84 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

the  exile,  when  the  tragic  humiliation  of  a 
' *  chosen  people ' '  had  induced  in  them  a  lively 
consciousness  of  guilt,  burnt  offerings  gave 
place  to  sin  offerings.  And  the  moment  you 
find  sin  offerings,  you  find  the  notion  that 
Jehovah  needs  to  be  propitiated. 

Consider  a  picture:  In  the  city  of  Jerusa- 
lem the  people  are  fasting,  for  it  is  the  day  of 
atonement.  Already  the  high  priest  has  of- 
fered a  sacrifice  in  expiation  of  his  own  sin 
and  the  sins  of  his  household.  He  has  removed 
the  gorgeous  vestments  in  which  the  people 
are  accustomed  to  see  him,  and  attired  him- 
self in  a  simple  linen  garment,  spotlessly 
white.  At  last  the  dramatic  moment  arrives 
when  the  sins  of  all  Israel  are  to  be  atoned 
for.  At  the  door  of  the  temple  stands  the 
high  priest.  Before  him  are  two  goats,  re- 
sembling each  other  as  closely  as  possible: 
the  one  to  be  used  as  a  sin  offering  to  Jeho- 
vah ;  the  other  to  be  sent  into  a  solitary  place, 
bearing,  symbolically,  the  sins  of  the  people. 
While  the  people  stand  with  bated  breath,  the 
priest  draws  lots,  made  of  gold,  and  ties  a 
cord  of  scarlet  cloth  around  the  neck  of  the 
goat  that  has  been  chosen  as  sin-bearer.  The 
goat  allotted  to  Jehovah  is  then  killed,  and  its 
blood  sprinkled  upon  the  Mercy  Seat  in  the 
Holy  of  holies.    This  done,  the  priest  returns 

85 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

to  the  outer  court,  places  both  hands  upon  the 
living  goat,  and  confesses  over  it  the  sins  of 
the  people:  "We  beseech  thee,  0  Lord,  Thy 
people,  the  house  of  Israel,  have  done  iniqui- 
tously,  transgressed,  and  sinned  before  Thee. 
We  beseech  thee,  0  Lord,  forgive  now  the 
iniquities,  the  transgressions,  and  the  sins 
wherein  thy  people,  the  house  of  Israel,  have 
done  iniquitously,  transgressed,  and  sinned 
before  thee."  Accompanied  by  leading  citi- 
zens, the  goat  is  then  led  away  to  the  edge  of 
the  wilderness,  and  thence,  by  a  lone  individ- 
ual, to  the  brow  of  a  precipice,  to  be  cast  over 
backward,  and  dashed  to  pieces  among  the 
rocks  below.  When  evening  comes,  the  fast 
is  broken,  and  the  people  surrender  them- 
selves to  unrestrained  rejoicing;  for  the  sins 
of  a  nation  have  been  not  only  atoned  for,  but 
removed  from  its  borders,  and  the  approval 
of  the  Most  High  is  resting  upon  them.* 

This  solemn  scene  speaks  for  itself.  There 
is  an  ethical  grandeur  here  which  all  will  feel. 
But  is  there  not  also  a  survival  of  the  primi- 
tive notion  that  an  offended  Deity  must  be 
propitiated  by  some  kind  of  offering? 

This  notion  of  a  God  who  requires  to  be 


1  Leviticus  16.  Sec  also  article  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  on  "Day  of 
Atonement,"  by  S.  R.  Driver  and  H.  A.  White.  This  article  contains 
quotations  from  the  Mishnic  treatise  Yoma,  which  gives  fresh  details 

86 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

propitiated  appeared  again  in  mediaeval  the- 
ology which  set  forth  such  ideas  as  these. 
Through  the  sin  of  Adam  the  whole  human 
race  had  come  under  the  condemnation  of 
God,  and  under  sentence  of  eternal  banish- 
ment from  his  presence.  But  God,  in  his  un- 
deserved compassion,  had  devised  a  plan  of 
salvation.  According  to  this  plan,  God's  own 
Son  had  descended  to  earth,  and  gone  through 
a  program  which  began  at  Bethlehem  and 
ended  on  Calvary.  The  program  called  for 
Bethlehem.  But,  really,  Jesus  had  lived  only 
that  he  might  die.  Not  by  the  life  that  he 
lived  but  by  the  death  that  he  died  he  had 
made  it  possible  for  God  to  forgive  a  guilty, 
imperiled  race.  Harsher  forms  of  the  doc- 
trine asserted  that  Jesus  by  his  death  had 
turned  aside  the  wrath  of  his  Father,  and  in- 
duced in  God  a  willingness  to  forgive.  In 
either  case,  all  that  remained  for  men  to  do 
was  to  " accept' '  this  plan  of  salvation  which 
God  had  provided. 

As  everyone  knows,  this  mediaeval  concep- 
tion has  projected  itself  into  modern  thinking. 
It  appears  in  the  well-known  refrain,  "  Jesus 
paid  it  all,"  and,  indeed,  in  many  of  the 
hymns  which  are  still  sung  in  the  churches. 
Down  even  to  our  own  time,  men  have  been 
told  that  God  needed  to  be  propitiated,  that  he 
87 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

was  propitiated  by  Jesus 's  death  on  the  cross, 
and  that  what  now  remains  for  erring  mortals 
to  do  is  " accept' '  this  offering  which  Jesus 
has  made. 

n 

But  neither  the  prophets  nor  Jesus  found 
any  obstacle  to  forgiveness  in  the  heart  of 
God. 

The  belief  of  the  prophets  is  reflected  in 
the  well-known  saying,  "Let  the  wicked  for- 
sake his  way,  and  the  unrighteous  man  his 
thoughts;  and  let  him  return  unto  the  Lord, 
and  he  will  have  mercy  upon  him ;  and  to  our 
God,  for  he  will  abundantly  pardon. ' ,3  What 
must  the  evil  man  do  to  obtain  pardon?  Only 
forsake  his  evil  way  and  return  to  the  Lord ! 
The  Lord  is  ready  and  eager  to  forgive.  He 
will  " abundantly  pardon.' ' 

Indeed,  there  are  instances  not  a  few  in 
which  the  prophets  reveal  an  angry  impa- 
tience with  the  whole  sacrificial  system.  "To 
what  purpose  is  the  multitude  of  your  sac- 
rifices unto  me?  saith  the  Lord:  I  am  full  of 
the  burnt  offerings  of  rams,  and  the  fat  of 
fed  beasts;  and  I  delight  not  in  the  blood  of 
bullocks,  or  of  lambs,  or  of  he-goats.  .  .  . 
Wash  you,  make  you  clean ;  put  away  the  evil 

» Isa.  55.  7. 

88 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

of  your  doings  from  before  mine  eyes ;  cease 
to  do  evil:  learn  to  do  well;  seek  judgment, 
relieve  the  oppressed,  judge  the  fatherless, 
plead  for  the  widow. ' '*  So  Isaiah.  "Where- 
with shall  I  come  before  the  Lord,  and  bow 
myself  before  the  high  God?  Shall  I  come 
before  him  with  burnt  offerings,  with  calves 
of  a  year  old  ?  Will  the  Lord  be  pleased  with 
thousands  of  rams,  or  with  ten  thousands  of 
rivers  of  oil  f  shall  I  give  my  first-born  for  my 
transgression,  the  fruit  of  my  body  for  the 
sin  of  my  soul?  He  hath  showed  thee,  0  man, 
what  is  good ;  and  what  doth  the  Lord  require 
of  thee  but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy, 
and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God?"5  So 
Micah.  "I  hate,  I  despise  your  feasts,  and  I 
will  take  no  delight  in  your  solemn  assemblies. 
Yea,  though  ye  offer  me  your  burnt  offerings, 
and  meal  offerings,  I  will  not  accept  them: 
neither  will  I  regard  the  peace  offerings  of 
your  fat  beasts.  .  .  .  But  let  justice  roll  down 
as  waters,  and  righteousness  as  a  mighty 
stream."8    So  Amos. 

The  Psalms,  as  a  whole,  reflect  the  priestly 
conception  of  propitiatory  sacrifice.  But  they 
contain  at  least  a  few  wonderful  passages  in 


*  Isa.  1.  lOff. 

8  Micah  6.  6-8. 

•  Amos  5.  21-24. 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

which  the  prophetic  demand  for  a  right  inner 
attitude  finds  unforgettable  expression.  The 
author  of  the  fortieth  psalm  says : 

1 '  Sacrifice  and  meal-offering  thou  hast  no  de- 
light in; 

Burnt  offering  and  sin  offering  hast  thou 
not  required. 

Then  said  I,  Lo,  I  am  come ; 

In  the  roll  of  the  book  it  is  written  of  me : 

I  delight  to  do  thy  will,  0  my  God."T 

And  who  does  not  recall  that  splendid  utter- 
ance of  the  author  of  the  fifty-first  psalm? — 

"Thou  delightest  not  in  sacrifice,  else  would 

I  give  it ; 
Thou  hast  no  pleasure  in  burnt  offering. 
The  sacrifices  of  God  are  a  broken  spirit : 
A  broken  and  a  contrite  heart,  0  Lord,  thou 

wilt  not  despise.,,8 

Israel's  greatest  spirits  found  no  obstacle 
to  forgiveness  in  the  heart  of  God.  They  felt 
no  need  of  propitiating  God.  They  felt  tre- 
mendously the  need  of  a  changed  attitude  on 
the  part  of  an  evil  man. 

And  Jesus?  Theologians  have  taken  us 
into  a  countinghouse,  and  introduced  us  to 


»  Psa.  40.  6-8. 
■  Pea.  51.  16,  17. 


90 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

an  inexorable  creditor,  demanding  the  pay- 
ment of  the  last  pound  of  flesh.  They  have 
taken  us  also  into  a  courtroom,  and  introduced 
us  to  an  inexorable  judge,  insisting  that  the 
last  demand  of  an  abstract  justice  shall  be 
met.  But  Jesus  takes  us  into  a  home,  where 
a  younger  son  has  played  the  fool,  and  intro- 
duces us  to  a  broken-hearted  father  who  is 
willing  to  forgive,  who  can  forgive,  who  does 
forgive,  the  moment  his  disillusioned  boy 
comes  penitently  home.  Jesus  has  nothing  to 
say  about  the  need  of  propitiating  God.  What 
he  says  about  God  is,  " "While  he  [the  penitent 
prodigal]  was  yet  afar  off,  his  father  saw 
him,  and  was  moved  with  compassion,  and  ran 
and  fell  on  his  neck,  and  kissed  him. ' ,9  Is  not 
this  the  gospel,  the  good  news?  There  is  no 
obstacle  to  forgiveness  in  God,  but  only  in 
man ;  and  the  one  condition  of  forgiveness  is 
a  thoroughgoing  repentance. 

Ill 

It  is  this  gospel  of  the  prophets  and  of 
Jesus  that  we  need.  What  inspiration  is  there 
for  modern  men  in  a  conception  of  God  which 
insists  that  God  will  not,  or  cannot,  forgive 
until  he  has  been  in  some  way  propitiated? 

Consider  some  of  the  things  which  we  are 

•  Luke  15.  20 

91 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

trying  to  do  to-day.  In  our  schools  of  correc- 
tion, our  so-called  reformatories,  in  some  of 
our  State  prisons,  even,  we  are  seeking  no 
longer  merely  to  punish  men ;  we  are  seeking 
to  save  them.  We  are  seeking  no  longer 
merely  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  an  abstract 
justice ;  we  are  seeking  to  make  good  citizens 
out  of  men  who  have  become  bad  citizens.  We 
once  said,  "  'Let  the  punishment  fit  the  crime ' 
— an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth. ' '  But 
we  are  now  saying,  "Let  the  punishment  fit 
the  criminal.,,  What  people  like  Thomas 
Mott  Osborne  want  to  know  is  not,  What 
punishment  should  be  meted  out  to  this  man 
in  view  of  what  he  has  done  ?  but,  What  help 
should  be  given  to  this  man  in  view  of  what 
he  may  become?  That  is  to  say,  the  aim  of 
modern  penology  is  no  longer  vindictive ;  it  is 
redemptive.  And  there  are  those  who  believe 
that  this  aim  should  be  our  guide  in  dealing, 
not  alone  with  a  sinning  individual,  but  also 
with  a  sinning  nation;  that  the  world's  ques- 
tion concerning  Germany,  for  example,  should 
be,  not,  What  punishment  should  be  meted  out 
to  Germany  in  view  of  what  she  has  done? 
but,  What  help  should  be  given  to  Germany  in 
view  of  the  part  which  she  ought  to  play  in 
the  future  life  of  the  world?  (There  are  times 
when  in  order  effectively  to  "help"  a  sinning 
92 


TO  BE  SAVED! 

man  or  a  sinning  nation,  penalty  must  be  im- 
posed ;  but  it  should  be  imposed  redemptively, 
never  vindictively.)  There  is,  I  venture  to 
believe,  a  steadily  growing  number  of  persons 
who  have  no  faith  in  measures  that  are  purely 
vindictive.  They  can  see  no  hope  for  a  better 
world  in  policies  which  demand  an  eye  for  an 
eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth.  Such  policies  have 
miserably  failed.  They  are  coming  increas- 
ingly to  believe  that  the  one  hope  of  a  decent 
civilization  lies  in  the  acceptance  of  the  teach- 
ing, "Do  good — even  to  those  who  hate  you." 
What  inspiration  is  there  for  such  people  in 
a  conception  of  God  which  insists  that  God 
either  will  not  or  cannot  forgive  until  he  has 
obtained  "satisfaction"  for  his  sense  of  in- 
jury, or  for  his  sense  of  justice?  Does  not 
such  a  conception  cause  God  to  appear  mor- 
ally inferior  to  the  best  men  and  women  of 
our  time,  who  are  loyally  subordinating  every 
personal,  private  consideration,  and  seeking, 
not  to  secure  the  last  demand  of  an  abstract 
justice,  but  to  save  the  lives  of  men  and  of 
nations,  and  to  build  a  better  world! 

IV 

What  is  salvation?  The  best  intelligence 
and  the  best  conscience  of  this  present  time 
unite  in  saying  that  sin,  fundamentally,  is 

93 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

selfishness — the  mean  decision  to  secure  one 's 
own  pleasure,  or  one's  own  profit,  without 
any  regard  to  the  highest  welfare  of  other 
people,  and  without  any  concern  for  the  pur- 
pose of  God.  If  this  be  sin,  can  salvation  be 
anything  less,  or  other,  than  the  spirit  which 
says,  "I  am  come  not  to  be  ministered  unto 
but  to  minister"?  and,  also,  "Lo,  I  am  come 
to  do  thy  will,  0  God"? 

The  tests  of  salvation,  what  are  they?  Ec- 
clesiasticism has  asked:  "Do  you  believe? 
Can  you  accept  without  mental  reservations 
the  teaching  of  the  church !"  Jesus  said,  "Not 
every  one  that  saith  unto  me,  Lord,  Lord, 
shall  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven ;  but  he 
that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father  which  is  in 
heaven.10  Ecclesiasticism  has  asked,  "Do  you 
feel  satisfied  ? ' ' — which,  being  interpreted,  has 
often  meant,  "Have  you  had  an  emotional 
experience  according  to  type?"  Jesus  de- 
clared, * '  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them. ' ,u 
Ecclesiasticism  has  said,  "If  you  will  accept 
our  teaching  and  conform  to  our  ritual,  we 
will  recognize  you  as  a  member  of  the  house- 
hold of  faith,  our  brother,  our  sister,  our 
mother."  Jesus  said,  "Whosoever  shall  do 
the  will  of  God,  the  same  is  my  brother,  and 


»  Matt.  7.  21. 
»  Matt.  7.  20. 


94 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

sister,  and  mother."12  The  tests  of  salvation 
employed  by  many  forms  of  ecclesiasticism — 
how  superficial  they  are  as  compared  with  the 
searching  tests  of  Jesus ! 


But  now  a  most  important  question  con- 
fronts us,  namely,  How  is  salvation  to  be  se- 
cured— the  sort  of  salvation  recognized  by 
the  great  Hebrew  prophets  and  by  Jesus? 
Our  own  answer  would  be  somewhat  as 
follows : 

1.  By  repentance — a  thoroughgoing  re- 
pentance, involving  shame  and  sorrow  and  a 
change  of  attitude.  And  this,  we  believe,  can 
be  most  certainly  induced  by  opening  a  man's 
eyes  to  the  consequences  of  his  sin  in  other 
people's  lives.  We  noted  above  that  Jesus, 
when  speaking  of  forgiveness,  takes  us  into 
a  home,  and  introduces  us  to  a  father  who  is 
grieving  over  the  moral  loss  of  his  son. 
Where  will  one  find  a  more  terrific  revelation 
of  the  damnableness  of  sin  than  in  some  home 
where  the  innocent  are  suffering  in  conse- 
quence of  the  deeds  of  the  guilty? 

Consider  the  case  of  a  gently  nurtured  and 
fine-spirited  woman  who  discovers,  too  late, 
that  her  husband  is  a  beast.    As  he  sits  in  her 

u  Mark  3.  35. 

95 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

presence,  dazed  by  liquor,  or  consumed  by 
lust,  every  spiritual  thing  in  him  submerged, 
her  soul  writhes  in  anguish ;  she  is  wounded  by 
his  transgressions.  Or  consider  a  case  such 
as  this :  A  few  years  ago  The  Outlook  pub- 
lished a  story  purporting  to  be  true.  The 
author  said  that  in  a  luxurious  European 
hotel  a  friend  of  his  talked  one  day  with  an 
American  business  man  who  had  great  pos- 
sessions. In  the  course  of  the  conversation 
the  friend  remarked,  "What  a  source  of  sat- 
isfaction a  great  business  such  as  yours  must 
be ! ' '  But  the  man  who  had  great  possessions 
looked  fixedly  before  him  as  he  replied,  "Yes, 
yes,  but  what  does  it  all  amount  to  when  your 
son  is  a  fool?" 

It  is  not  an  inexorable  creditor  nor  an  inex- 
orable judge,  it  is  a  wounded  wife,  a  grieving 
parent,  who  brings  home  to  us  the  hatefulness 
of  sin. 

And  it  is  just  this  terrific  revelation  of 
the  consequences  of  sin  in  some  other  life 
that  will  bring  a  man  to  his  senses  if  anything 
can.  In  Brieux's  terrible  play,  Damaged 
Goods,  the  young  husband  does  not  realize 
the  enormity  of  his  offense,  nor  does  he  feel 
any  regret  for  it,  until,  in  his  baby's  frightful 
affliction,  and  his  wife's  hoarse  cry  of  despair, 
he  sees  what  havoc  his  sin  has  wrought  in  two 

96 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

innocent  lives.  And  how  many  a  man  has 
kept  on  sinning  without  any  suggestion  of 
remorse,  until,  one  day,  in  his  mother's  face, 
certain  lines,  which  he  has  put  there,  force 
him  to  realize  that  she  has  been  bruised  by  his 
iniquities.  If  the  knowledge  that  by  his  lust, 
or  by  his  selfishness,  he  has  blighted  the  live3 
of  innocent  persons  does  not  cause  a  man  to 
1 l come  to  himself,' '  is  there  anything  that 
will? 

And  what  if  God  too  suffers  in  conse- 
quence of  human  sin?  What  if  there  is  a 
cross  in  the  heart  of  the  Eternal?  What  if, 
whenever  a  man  sins,  the  whole  universe  is 
vitally  affected,  and  some  purpose  is  frus- 
trated, some  good  unachieved?  What  if  sin 
has  cosmic  consequences ! 

Men  are  saved  by  repentance.  They  are 
brought  to  repentance  by  some  terrific  reve- 
lation of  the  results  of  sin. 

2.  By  faith.  A  distinguished  neurologist 
has  recently  conducted  an  interesting  and  sig- 
nificant experiment.13  He  induced  three  young 
men  to  submit  themselves  to  an  experiment 
for  the  purpose  of  testing  the  effect  of  mental 
suggestion  on  physical  strength.  They  were  in- 


u  See  The  Spirit,  Streeter  and  Others,  the  chapter  contributed  by  Cap- 
tain J.  Arthur  Hadfield  of  the  Ashhurst  Neurological  War  Hospital,  Ox- 
ford.   The^Macmillan  Company,  publishers. 

97 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

structed  to  grip  a  dynamometer  and  exert  their 
will  to  the  utmost.  He  tested  them  first  in 
their  normal  waking  condition.  Then  he  hyp- 
notized them,  and  tested  them  under  the  '  i  sug- 
gestion' ?  that  they  were  weak;  and  again,  un- 
der the  "suggestion"  that  they  were  very 
strong.  In  their  normal  waking  condition, 
they  gave  an  average  grip  of  one  hundred  and 
one  pounds.  Under  the  suggestion  of  weak- 
ness, they  gave  an  average  grip  of  twenty-nine 
pounds.  Under  the  suggestion  of  great 
strength,  they  gave  an  average  grip  of  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-nine  pounds.  As  the  result 
of  this  and  other  similar  experiments  the  in- 
vestigator concludes  that  "when  our  minds 
are  depressed  with  the  idea  of  weakness,  our 
strength  may  be  diminished  by  two  thirds; 
whereas,  if  we  have  the  stimulus  of  a  great 
inspiration,  our  strength  may  thereby  be  in- 
creased by  one  half."  What  a  commentary 
on  the  saying,  "Thy  faith  hath  made  thee 
whole."14  * 

Long  before  the  Christian  era  men  were 
cured  of  physical  ills  by  faith.  The  earliest 
diagnosis  of  disease  was  "possession."  Not 
only  madness  and  epilepsy,  but  every  kind  of 
ailment  was  attributed  to  the  presence  of 
some  evil  spirit.    And  the  earliest  method  of 

"  Mark  5.  34. 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

treatment  was  exorcism.  The  means  em- 
ployed were  many  and  various;  grotesque, 
sometimes,  and  even  horrible.  But  the  prim- 
itive medicine-man's  success  (when  he  had  it) 
was  due,  not  to  his  medicines  or  his  incanta- 
tions, but  to  the  patient's  faith  in  him  and 
in  them. 

Of  the  remarkable  cures  performed  by 
Jesus,  Mark's  Gospel  reports  twelve  with 
some  detail.  The  method  of  treatment  was, 
in  two  cases,  the  use  of  spittle  and  the  laying 
on  of  hands ;  in  two,  merely  a  touch ;  in  the 
rest,  merely  a  word  of  command.  But  it  is 
very  apparent  that  whatever  the  method,  its 
purpose  was  to  quicken  the  faith  of  the  pa- 
tient. And  is  it  not  also  evident  that  it  was 
the  patient's  faith  that  effected  the  cure?  The 
power  of  recovery  was  present,  though  latent. 
What  Jesus  supplied  was  the  all-important 
quickening  touch. 

Shortly  before  the  Master  went  to  his  doom 
he  called  his  disciples'  attention  to  the  ex- 
traordinary cures  which  he  had  been  able  to 
perform,  and  then  surprised  them  by  saying, 
"Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  He  that  be- 
lieve th  on  me,  the  works  that  I  do  shall  he  do 
also;  and  greater  works  than  these  shall  he 
do."1B    During  the  apostolic  period  men  who 

«  John  14.  12. 

99 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

"believed  on  Jesus"  did  do  just  such  won- 
derful works  of  healing  as  he  himself  had 
performed.  And  to-day,  by  similar  methods, 
the  psychotherapist  is  accomplishing  won- 
ders. In  the  Ashhurst  Neurological  War 
Hospital,  in  Oxford,  the  blind  are  being  en- 
abled to  see,  the  deaf  to  hear,  the  lame  to  walk, 
and  the  dumb  to  sing.16 

If  faith  is  the  victory  by  which  men  are 
overcoming  physical  ills,  it  must  likewise  be 
the  victory  by  which  they  shall  overcome 
moral  ills. 

Here  is  a  man  named  Zacchaeus.11  He  is  not 
a  desirable  citizen.  All  his  neighbors  look 
down  upon  him;  he,  therefore,  looks  down 
upon  himself.  He  has  lost  all  faith  in  himself, 
and  is  in  a  very  bad  way.  But  one  day  there 
comes  to  his  village  a  Man  with  a  reputation 
for  wisdom  and  piety ;  a  Prophet,  in  fact,  held 
in  high  honor  by  the  people.  And  this 
Prophet  singles  out  ZacchaBus.  In  the  pres- 
ence of  the  neighbors  who  have  snubbed  this 
undesirable  citizen,  he  says,  "Zacchaeus,  I  am 
inviting  myself  to  dine  at  your  house. ' '  And 
when  Jesus  looks  into  the  eyes  of  his  host  and 
says,  "Remember,  Zacchaeus,  you  also  are  a 
son  of  Abraham;  yours  also  are  the  memo- 

"The  Spirit,  Streeter  and  Others,  p.  110. 
»  Luke  19.  Iff. 

100 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

ries,  the  hopes,  the  heritage  of  Israel,"  some- 
thing happens  to  the  community's  "bad 
man."  He  begins  to  have  faith  in  himself. 
And  by  this  freshly  begotten  faith  he  is  saved, 
— so  truly  saved  that  he  wants  to  give  half  his 
goods  to  the  poor,  and,  in  every  case  where 
he  has  swindled  anyone,  to  make  fourfold 
restitution. 

This  happened  in  Jericho  long  ago.  It  is 
still  happening  in  Chicago.  That  is  to  say, 
there  are  men  in  Chicago  who  are  being  saved 
by  faith.  In  Hull  House  they  are  being  saved 
by  the  faith  begotten  in  them  by  Jane  Ad- 
dams.  In  Chicago  Commons  they  are  being 
saved  in  like  manner  by  the  faith  begotten  in 
them  by  Graham  Taylor.  Men  who  had  con- 
cluded that  they  were  altogether  worthless 
(an  exceedingly  dangerous  mental  condition) 
are  saying,  "I  am  worth  something  to  Gra- 
ham Taylor;  perhaps  I  am  worth  something 
to  God."  Men  who,  awhile  ago,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  terrible  temptation  and  overwhelm- 
ing discouragement,  were  saying,  "It's  no 
use;  I've  tried,  and  tried  again,  but  always 
failed, ' '  to-day,  because  some  one  has  believed 
in  them,  are  beginning  to  believe  in  themselves 
and  to  say,  "I  can."  They  are  being  saved, 
these  men,  by  faith. 

In  the  case  of  many  of  the  cures  performed 
101 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

by  Jesus  the  faith  of  the  patient  was  reen- 
forced  by  the  faith  of  his  friends.  Many  a 
man  who  is  morally  sick  needs  to  have  his 
faith  quickened  and  strengthened  by  the  faith 
of  others.  "  Whose  soever  sins  ye  forgive, 
they  are  forgiven  unto  them;  whose  soever 
sins  ye  retain,  they  are  retained.18  The  use  to 
which  this  saying  has  been  put  by  the  propo- 
nents of  sacerdotalism  has  blinded  many  peo- 
ple to  its  extraordinary  significance.  As  a  de- 
fense of  presumptuous  authority  on  the  part 
of  a  politically-minded  priesthood  it  is  perni- 
cious; but  as  a  statement  of  the  power  of  a 
community  to  assist  or  thwart  the  moral  recov- 
ery of  its  erring  members  it  is  indisputable. 
Speaking  in  his  pulpit  in  Columbus  one  eve- 
ning, Washington  Gladden  exclaimed,  "How 
many  a  hapless  woman  is  walking  these 
streets  to-night,  outside  her  paradise ;  and  the 
flaming  sword  which  prevents  her  return  is  not 
God's  wrath,  but  man's  relentlessness !  God's 
forgiveness  can  hardly  be  made  effective  in 
her  case  because  of  man's — and  woman's — 
unforgiveness."19 

In  Victor  Hugo 's  immortal  story  Jean  Val- 
jean  leaves  prison  walls  only  to  find  society 


»  John  20.  23. 

»  Washington  Gladden,  The  New  Theology,  MoClelita  Company,  pub- 
lishers, Columbus,  Ohio. 

102 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

suspicious,  resentful,  hostile.  As  soon  as  it 
is  learned  that  he  is  an  ex-convict  he  is  re- 
fused work,  food,  kindness.  Late  at  night, 
having  tramped  all  day  without  anything  to 
eat,  he  knocks  at  the  door  of  a  cottage  where 
a  light  is  still  burning.  When  the  cottager 
opens  the  door,  he  asks  for  a  bit  of  food,  and 
for  lodging,  even  though  it  be  in  the  stable. 
The  cottager  looks  at  him  intently  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  then  with  the  exclamation,  "Are 
you  the  man?"  reaches  for  his  gun.  "For 
pity's  sake  a  drop  of  water,"  pleads  Jean 
Valjean.  "Bather  a  gun  shot,"  replies  the 
man.  That  night  something  died  in  the  soul 
of  the  ex-convict.  Its  name  was  Hope.  He 
committed  an  offense,  not  serious.  He  com- 
mitted another  offense,  very  serious.  He  de- 
veloped murder  in  his  heart.  It  was  only 
when  the  good  Bishop  forgave  him,  and  in- 
sisted upon  believing  in  Mm,  that  hope,  faith, 
and  goodness  were  reborn  in  the  soul  of  Jean 
Valjean. 

By  faith  are  we  saved.  And,  very  often, 
the  faith  which  saves  us  is  begotten  in  us  by 
those  who  believe  in  us,  and  encourage  us  to 
believe  in  ourselves. 

Faith  reaches  its  climax  of  redemptive 
power  when  it  links  a  man  to  his  Maker. 
George  Eliot  lights  up  a  well-known  fact  when 
103 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

she  says :  "  Ideas  are  often  poor  ghosts.  Our 
sun-filled  eyes  cannot  discern  them.  .  .  .  But 
sometimes  they  are  made  flesh.  They  breathe 
upon  us  with  warm  breath ;  they  touch  us  with 
soft,  responsive  hands;  they  look  at  us  with 
sad,  sincere  eyes,  and  speak  to  us  in  appeal- 
ing tones ;  they  are  clothed  in  a  living  human 
soul,  with  all  its  conflicts,  its  faith,  and  its 
love.  Then  their  presence  is  a  power. ' '  That 
is  what  happens  when  a  man  passes  from  bare 
morality  to  religion.  The  abstract  demands 
of  right  and  duty — we  at  least  partly  know 
what  they  are.  But  the  good  which  we  would 
we  do  not;  the  evil  which  we  would  not  we 
practice.  Bare  morality  leaves  us  cold  and 
weak.  But  religion  introduces  the  personal 
element,  and  what  a  difference  that  makes! 
What  we  cannot  (at  least  we  do  not)  do  when 
moved  only  by  abstract  notions  of  right  and 
duty,  we  can  and  do  accomplish  when  moved 
by  enthusiastic  loyalty  toward  some  great  and 
commanding  personality. 

In  the  unforgettable  chapter  on  "The  Be- 
loved Captain,' '  Donald  Hankey  says,  "There 
is  not  one  of  us  but  would  gladly  have  died 
for  him. ' '  The  Beloved  Captain  himself  dies. 
He  is  killed  by  a  shell  while  endeavoring  to 
save  some  of  his  men.  And  Donald  Hankey 
writes:  "But  he  lives.  Somehow  he  lives. 
1U 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

And  we  who  knew  him  do  not  forget.  We  feel 
his  eyes  upon  us.  We  still  work  for  that  won- 
derful smile  of  his."  When  Jesus  died,  his 
disciples  began,  after  a  time,  to  say,  "But  he 
lives ;  somehow,  he  lives. '  ,2°  And  they  did  not 
forget  him.  They  continued  to  work  for  that 
wonderful  smile  of  his.  Can  anyone  estimate 
the  power  of  the  motive,  For  Christ's  sake? 
For  Christ's  sake,  men  have  undertaken  and 
accomplished  the  seemingly  impossible. 

Keligion  introduces  the  personal  element. 
It  lifts  the  hard,  forbidding  demands  of  ab- 
stract morality  into  the  glow  and  power  of  a 
great  personal  devotion.  And  Christianity 
insists  not  only  that  men  may  seek  and  find 
God  but  that  God  is  seeking  to  find  men. 
Francis  Thompson  does  a  daring  thing  in  his 
poem  ' '  The  Hound  of  Heaven. ' '  He  pictures 
the  Eternal  as  a  Heavenly  Hunter,  pursuing 
each  human  soul  until  he  catches  it. 

"I  fled  Him  down  the  nights  and  down  the  days; 

I  fled  Him  down  the  arches  of  the  years; 
I  fled  Him  down  the  labyrinthine  ways 

Of  my  own  mind;  and  in  the  midst  of  tears 
I  hid  from  Him,  and  under  running  laughter. 
Up  vistaed  hopes  I  sped; 
And  shot,  precipitated 
Adown  Titanic  glooms  of  chasmed  fears, 
And  fkose  strong  feet  that  followed,  followed  after" 


»The  author  intends  no  denial  here  of  an  "appearance"  of  Jesus  after 
his  crucifixion. 

105 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

But  Francis  Thompson,  picturing  the  Eter- 
nal as  a  Heavenly  Hunter,  is  merely  follow- 
ing the  lead  of  Jesus,  who  pictured  him  as  a 
Heavenly  Shepherd,  going  out  into  the  night 
and  the  storm  to  seek  and  save  that  which 
was  lost. 

To  sin  and  know  that  you  have  sinned;  to 
be  unclean  or  selfish ;  to  disappoint  those  who 
have  trusted  you  and  wound  those  who  have 
loved  you;  to  haul  down,  like  a  coward,  the 
flag  of  your  own  ideals ;  to  become  contemp- 
tible, if  not  in  the  eyes  of  others,  at  least  in 
your  own  eyes ;  to  discover  that  you  are  not 
only  wicked  at  times  but  weak,  pitifully  weak ; 
and  then,  conscious  both  of  guilt  and  of  weak- 
ness, to  appeal  for  help  to  the  Source  of  Life 
— and  get  it;  to  have  such  an  experience  is 
to  believe  in  the  power  of  God  to  save  a  man. 
And  the  man  to  whom  this  experience  comes, 
will  he  not  also  believe  that,  all  the  time,  the 
Heavenly  Hunter  has  been  pursuing  him,  the 
Heavenly  Shepherd  has  been  seeking  his  lost 
sheep  ? 

3.  Salvation,  in  the  Christian  sense,  de- 
mands faith  in  Jesus.  "Sirs,  what  must  I  do 
to  be  saved  V  Still  stands  that  ancient  an- 
swer, "Believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and 
thou  shalt  be  saved,  thou  and  thy  house. 
But  this  is  the  theme  of  the  next  chapter. 
106 


j  i 


TO  BE  SAVED? 


CHAPTEE  V 

JESUS  CHRIST  THE  HOPE  OF  THE 
WORLD 

When  Jesus  died,  his  followers  numbered 
not  more  than  five  hundred  persons,  most  of 
whom  belonged  to  what  a  cultivated  Euro- 
pean would  almost  certainly  call  the  "  lower 
classes.' '  And  when  Paul,  his  apostle, 
tramped  the  long,  hot  roads  of  Asia  Minor, 
it  is  doubtful  whether  he  attracted  any  more 
attention  in  that  vast  contemporaneous  Ro- 
man world  than  did  Bishop  Thoburn  in  India, 
or  Robert  Moflatt  in  China,  during  the  early 
years  of  their  missionary  labors. 

But,  in  the  second  century,  the  Roman  Pliny 
was  speaking  with  admiration  of  the  bands  of 
Christians  who  met  every  week  and  worshiped 
Christ  as  God,  and  bound  themselves  with  an 
oath  not  to  steal  nor  to  be  immoral.  These 
Christians  were  persecuted.  But  Tertullian 
could  boast  that  the  more  his  fellow  Chris- 
tians were  persecuted  the  more  numerous  they 
became,  the  blood  of  the  martyrs  becoming  the 
seed  of  the  church.  In  the  year  325  a  pro- 
fessed follower  of  Jesus  sat  on  the  throne 
107 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

of  the  Caesars.  In  the  sixth  century  the  Ger- 
mans, in  the  seventh  the  Scandinavians,  in 
the  ninth  the  Saxons,  acknowledged  Jesus  as 
Master  and  Lord.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  professed  followers  of 
Jesus  numbered  three  hundred  millions.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  they 
numbered  five  hundred  and  thirty-five  mil- 
lions, or  one  third  of  the  population  of  the 
world.  And  each  new  day  sees  the  number 
grow.  Europeanized  South  Africa,  with  ten 
million  people,  is  said  to  be  predominantly 
Christian.  The  Christians  of  India  number 
four  million.  In  Korea  one  out  of  every 
sixty-six  of  the  population  is  a  Christian.  On 
the  surface,  then,  it  would  appear  to  be  true 
that  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  are  becoming 
the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and  of  his  Christ. 


But  appearances  are  sometimes  deceptive. 
And  the  awful  experience  through  which  the 
world  has  just  passed  has  forced  us  to  look 
beneath  the  appearance  of  things,  at  the  real- 
ity of  things.  The  big  guns  have  not  only 
blown  away  the  topsoil  and  laid  bare  the  sub- 
soil of  northern  France;  they  have  blown 
away  the  veneer  and  laid  bare  the  realities 
of  our  Western  civilization.  And  now,  is  there 
108 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

anyone  who  really  believes  that  Christendom 
is  Christian  ?  When  the  war  began,  we  said  a 
great  many  eloquent  things  about  the  need  of 
preserving  a  Christian  civilization.  To-day, 
we  are  less  eloquent,  perhaps,  certainly  less 
rhetorical ;  but  we  are  clearer  visioned,  and, 
if  we  speak  of  a  Christian  civilization  at  all, 
it  is  sadly  to  confess  that  we  do  not  have  it — 
and  never  did. 

Some  of  us  have  discovered  that  we  our- 
selves are  not  Christian.  In  our  present 
mood,  we  cannot  identify  Christianity  with 
church  membership;  nor  can  we  identify  it 
with  intellectual  orthodoxy.  When  we  think 
of  Christianity  we  think  of  Jesus,  and  begin 
to  ask  ourselves  whether  we  possess  his  spirit. 
Some  of  us  have  felt  obliged  to  acknowledge 
that  we  do  not.  We  have  not  in  us  that  mind 
' 'which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus:  who,  being 
in  the  form  of  God,  counted  it  not  a  prize  to 
be  on  an  equality  with  God,  but  emptied  him- 
self, taking  the  form  of  a  servant,  .  .  .  becom- 
ing obedient  even  unto  death,  yea,  the  death 
of  the  cross. ' '  There  is  not  in  us  that  antisep- 
tic cleanness  of  thought  and  motive  which  men 
found  in  him,  nor  that  magnificent  courage 
which  led  him  to  risk  his  future  in  the  name 
of  an  ideal,  nor  that  amazing  magnanim- 
ity which  caused  him  to  forgive  his  enemies, 
109 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

nor  that  mighty  unselfishness  which  prompted 
him  to  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends. 

Nearly  two  thousand  years  ago,  when  Jesus 
came  to  the  turn  in  the  Bethany  road,  as  it 
winds  around  the  Mount  of  Olives,  whence 
it  is  possible  to  see  Jerusalem,  he  stopped. 
And  as  he  looked  upon  that  famous  city,  with 
its  white  temple  gleaming  in  the  sunlight,  and 
its  mansions  of  white  marble  rising  on  ter- 
race above  terrace  until  they  culminated  in 
the  palace  of  Herod,  far  famed  for  its  beauty, 
he  wept.  He  knew  only  too  well  that  Jeru- 
salem was  like  unto  a  whited  sepulcher,  out- 
wardly fair  to  look  upon,  but  within  full  of 
all  uncleanness  and  dead  men's  bones.  What 
would  he  do  if  he  were  to  look  to-day  upon 
London,  or  Paris,  or  New  York,  or  Chicago? 
Try  to  imagine  the  reaction  of  Jesus  to  the 
well-known  conditions  of  a  modern  city's 
slums.  There  is  a  fairly  well  authenticated 
story  to  the  effect  that  the  Japanese  govern- 
ment once  sent  an  embassy  to  England  to 
observe  Christianity  in  action,  and  that,  after 
the  embassy  had  visited  those  portions  of 
England's  metropolis  which  Charles  Booth 
called  Darkest  London,  they  reported  to  their 
government  that  it  would  not  be  worth  while 
to  make  Christianity  the  national  religion 
of  Japan. 

110 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

James  Russell  Lowell  once  wrote  some  lines 
which  must  have  brought  a  blush  of  shame  to 
the  cheek  of  his  generation : 

"Then  Christ  sought  out  an  artisan, 
A  low-browed,  stunted,  haggard  man, 
And  a  motherless  girl,  whose  fingers  thin 
Pushed  from  her  faintly  want  and  sin. 
These  he  set  in  the  midst  of  them, 
And,  as  they  drew  back  their  garment  hem, 
For  fear  of  defilement,  'Lo  here,'  cried  he, 
'The  images  ye  have  made  of  me!'" 

It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  these  bitter  lines 
do  not  condemn  us  as  they  condemned  the 
generation  which  preceded  us.  One  does  not 
recognize  the  typical  artisan  of  the  present 
time  (drawing  more  per  day  than  a  college 
professor)  in  Lowell's  "low-browed,  stunted, 
haggard  man."  Nor  does  he  recognize  the 
typical  woman  worker  in  the  "  motherless 
girl,  whose  fingers  thin"  push  "from  her 
faintly  want  and  sin."  But  it  cannot  be  de- 
nied that  in  the  industrial  world  of  Lowell's 
day  women  were  injured  and  men  brutalized. 
Men  and  women  both  were  used  as  mere  in- 
struments for  the  production  of  wealth  which 
they  themselves  were  not  permitted  to  share. 
From  the  greed  and  cruelty,  the  ruthless 
exploitation,  of  those  days,  we  are  suffering 
still — suffering  in  the  presence  of  millions  of 
111 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

stunted  bodies,  millions  of  warped  and 
twisted  minds,  millions  of  suspicions,  resent- 
ful, embittered  hearts.  Nor  can  anyone  even 
now  say  that  the  industrial  world  has  become 
Christian.  The  best  that  anyone  can  say  is 
that  here  and  there,  with  splendid  daring,  the 
principles  of  Jesus  are  being  applied  to  indus- 
trial relationships;  that  here  and  there  the 
great,  fundamental  Christian  contention  that 
a  man  is  an  end  in  himself,  and  not  merely  a 
means  to  an  end,  is  being  recognized  and 
honored. 

And,  finally,  there  is  this  other  fact,  star- 
tling, terrible,  disillusioning.  We  had  been 
listening  with  rapt  attention  to  a  famous  lec- 
ture on  the  Prince  of  Peace.  An  American 
philanthropist  had  built,  at  The  Hague,  a 
beautiful  temple,  and  dedicated  it  in  the  name 
of  Peace.  We  had  talked  about  peace  at  many 
a  Peace  Conference.  There  were  those  who 
said  and  believed  that  another  war  of  major 
importance  was  not  to  be  thought  of.  Mean- 
while, we  kept  on  piling  up  armaments,  and 
powerful  groups  of  competing  capitalists  kept 
on  asking  their  several  governments  to  back 
them  to  the  limit  in  a  wild  race  for  markets 
and  raw  materials.  Then  came  August,  1914 ; 
Austria's  brutal  ultimatum  to  Serbia;  Sir 
Edward  Grey's  frantic,  eleventh-hour  attempt 
112 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

at  intervention;  Germany's  deliberate  refusal 
of  arbitration;  Russia's  insistence  upon  mobi- 
lization— and  long  before  snow  fell,  Europe 
had  become  a  huge  battlefield,  where  night 
after  night  the  silent  stars  looked  down  upon 
the  bivouac  of  the  dead.  And  whereas,  in  the 
second  century,  amazed  Romans  exclaimed, 
"Behold  how  these  Christians  love  one  an- 
other !"  in  the  twentieth  century,  amazed  Ori- 
entals exclaimed,  "Behold  how  these  Chris- 
tians hate  one  another !"  There  are  no  ef- 
fects without  a  cause.  The  World  War,  cer- 
tainly, was  not  an  effect  without  a  cause.  And 
now  that  we  are  beginning  to  see  what  the 
causes  were — the  economic  as  well  as  the 
political  causes — we  are  constrained  to  ac- 
knowledge that  the  civilization  out  of  which 
it  came  was  far  more  pagan  than  Christian. 
There  is,  I  suppose,  at  least  some  encour- 
agement in  just  this  fact  that  now,  at  last,  we 
have  got  our  eyes  open.  We  are  no  longer 
living  in  a  fool's  paradise.  We  are  no  longer 
self-deceived.  The  light  that  is  in  us  is  no 
longer  darkness.  We  may  not  be  as  senti- 
mentally pious  as  we  once  were ;  we  are  cer- 
tainly more  honest,  more  courageous.  We  are 
now  ready  to  admit  that  Christianity  cannot 
be  identified  with  Western  civilization.  We 
know  now  that  vast  areas  of  life,  even  in  our 
113 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

Western  world,  have  never  been  Christianized. 
Much  of  our  personal  life  is  not  Christian, 
for  it  is  animated  by  the  spirit  of  selfishness, 
not  by  the  spirit  of  service.  Much  of  our  in- 
dustrial life  is  not  Christian;  it  is  operated 
not  in  accordance  with  the  Golden  Eule,  but 
only  in  accordance  with  the  rule  of  gold. 
Much  of  our  national  life  is  not  Christian.  In 
his  famous  farewell  address,  Washington  re- 
minded his  countrymen  that  it  is  folly  in  one 
nation  to  look  for  disinterested  favors  from 
another.  And  even  to-day,  the  difficulty  of 
getting  responsible  heads  of  governments  to 
look  out  over  the  world  through  Christian 
eyes  is  everywhere  manifest.  We  see  now 
that  Christendom  is  not  Christian. 

n 

It  would  be  manifestly  ungenerous  and  un- 
true to  say  that  Christianity  has  done  nothing 
to  improve  the  lot  of  mankind  since  Jesus 
lived  and  died.  If  one  were  to  make  such  a 
statement  as  that  would  not  the  very  stones 
cry  out  in  protest?  To  mention  no  other 
gains,  the  elevation  of  woman,  the  modern 
concern  for  child  welfare,  the  increasing  rec- 
ognition of  the  sacredness  of  human  life,  bear 
eloquent  witness  to  the  social  contribution  of 
the  Christian  enterprise.  One  may  acknowl- 
114 


TO  BE  SAVED! 

edge  the  working  of  other  forces  in  the  pro- 
duction of  these  great  human  gains  and  still 
maintain  that  Christianity  has  played  a  gal- 
lant and  conspicuous  part  in  bringing  them 
to  pass.  We  must  not  let  our  disappointment 
over  the  present  situation  blind  us  utterly  to 
the  really  splendid  achievements  which  stand 
to  the  credit  of  the  Christian  Church.  Might 
it  not  be  contended  that  the  present  world- 
wide unrest  is  itself  evidence  of  the  fact  that 
organized  Christianity  has  not  labored  in 
vain?  The  leaven  of  Jesus 's  gospel  has  been 
permitted  to  work.  But  when  all  this  has  been 
granted,  we  are  still  confronted  by  a  broken 
and  bleeding  world,  and  the  question  will  not 
down,  Why,  after  nearly  two  thousand  years 
of  reputedly  Christian  endeavor,  are  we  no 
nearer  to  the  kingdom  of  God? 

The  answer  which  this  chapter  ventures  to 
give  does  not  pretend  to  be  exhaustive.  We 
are  seeking  only  to  point  out  certain  direc- 
tions in  which  an  answer  may  be  found.  And 
first,  in  the  institutionalizing  of  Christianity. 
It  may  be  conceded  at  once  that  this  was  by 
no  means  wholly  undesirable.  A  bodiless 
Christianity  would  have  been  impotent,  at  the 
downfall  of  the  Eoman  empire,  to  gather  up 
the  fragments  of  a  shattered  civilization, 
bring  order  out  of  chaos,  educate  semibar- 
115 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

barous  peoples,  and  reshape  the  life  of  the 
western  world.  But  what  happened  was  this : 
It  is  the  fifth  century,  and  that  proud  and 
powerful  empire  which  caused  so  many  Chris- 
tians to  perish  miserably  in  bloody  arenas 
has  itself  perished.  Perished?  Yes,  but  it 
lives  again.  The  dead  Roman  empire  has 
come  to  life  in  the  Roman  Church.  The  bishop 
of  Rome  becomes  the  Caesar  of  a  new  Roman 
empire,  baptized  in  the  name  of  the  Father, 
and  of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  He 
surrounds  himself  with  all  the  pomp  and 
power  of  an  Oriental  monarch,  he  who  stands 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world  as  the  earthly  repre- 
sentative of  Jesus — the  Jesus  who  said,  "The 
kings  of  the  Gentiles  exercise  lordship  over 
them;  .  .  .  but  ye  shall  not  be  so :  but  he  that 
is  the  greater  among  you,  let  him  become  the 
younger ;  and  he  that  is  chief,  as  he  that  doth 
serve.' ' 

We  have  no  disposition  at  this  point  to 
throw  stones  at  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
They  who  live  in  glass  houses  are  not  in  a 
position  to  throw  stones.  The  point  is  that 
the  moment  a  great  ideal  becomes  embodied 
it  must  work  under  the  handicap  of  its  body. 
The  body  begins  to  adjust  itself  to  its  political 
and  economic  environment,  and  in  this  proc- 
ess of  adjustment  the  ideal  which  the  body  is 
116 


TO  BE  SAVED! 

supposed  to  incarnate  is  subtly  changed.  It 
is  easy  enough  for  a  Protestant  to  stand  and 
pray  thus  with  himself :  "I  thank  thee,  O  God, 
that  I  am  not  as  these  Koman  Catholics  who 
have  diluted  the  ideal  of  Jesus  and  accom- 
modated themselves  to  a  non-Christian  en- 
vironment/ '  But  where  is  the  Protestant 
Church  concerning  which  no  similar  accusa- 
tion could  be  made  1  Have  the  Methodists  or 
the  Baptists  or  the  Presbyterians  maintained 
the  ideal  of  Jesus  in  its  pristine  purity  and 
steadfastly  refused  to  adjust  themselves  to  a 
non-Christian  social  order? 

It  is  difficult  for  institutions  to  maintain 
themselves  when  they  are  denied  political  pro- 
tection— not  impossible,  perhaps,  but  difficult ; 
and  once  and  again,  in  order  to  secure  politi- 
cal favor,  organized  Christianity  has  submit- 
ted to  some  situation  that  was  flagrantly  un- 
christian. It  is  likewise  difficult  for  institu- 
tions to  maintain  themselves  without  financial 
support;  and  once  and  again,  in  order  to  se- 
cure seemingly  necessary  financial  support, 
organized  Christianity  has  been  careful  not 
to  examine  too  minutely  the  sources  of  its 
income.  It  is  written  concerning  Jesus,  "The 
devil  taketh  him  unto  an  exceeding  high  moun- 
tain, and  showeth  him  all  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world,  and  the  glory  of  them;  and  he  said 
117 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

unto  him,  All  these  things  will  I  give  thee,  if 
thou  wilt  fall  down  and  worship  me."  Jesus 
replied, ' '  Get  thee  hence,  Satan ;  for  it  is  writ- 
ten, Thou  shalt  worship  the  Lord  thy  God, 
and  him  only  shalt  thou  serve.' '  But  organ- 
ized Christianity,  once  and  again,  has  closed 
with  the  offer. 

Why,  after  nearly  two  thousand  years  of 
reputedly  Christian  endeavor,  are  we  still  so 
far  away  from  a  righteous  civilization?  An- 
other direction  in  which  we  may  look  for  an 
answer  to  this  question  is  the  intellectualiz- 
ing  of  Christianity. 

When  the  frightened  warden  of  the  Philip- 
pian  prison  called  out,  "Sirs,  what  must  I 
do  to  be  saved?"  Paul  and  Silas  answered, 
"Believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  thou  shalt 
be  saved,  thou  and  thy  house. ' '  This  answer 
has  become  historic.  Down  through  the  cen- 
turies it  has  furnished  the  cue  to  Christian 
preachers  and  teachers.  To  men  asking, 
"What  must  we  do  to  be  saved?"  the  accred- 
ited representatives  of  the  Christian  Church 
have  ever  replied,  "Believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ." 

Well,  in  those  first  anxious  years  of  the  new 
Faith,  to  believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in- 
volved a  very  real  and  daring  kind  of  personal 
adventure.  We  are  informed  that  the  grate- 
118 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

ful  warden  did  believe  on  the  Lord  Jesns 
Christ,  and  that  during  that  strange,  wild 
night  he  and  all  his  family  were  baptized. 
What  happened  to  him  afterward  is  not  re- 
ported. Very  likely  he  lost  his  job,  if  not  his 
head.  For  this  man,  the  decision  to  believe 
on  Jesus  involved  a  sharp  and  heroic  break 
with  the  past,  a  reorganization  of  ideas  and 
ideals,  a  new  kind  of  life. 

But  as  Christianity  moved  westward  it 
came  under  the  influence  of  Greek  philoso- 
phy; and  in  the  attempt  to  adjust  itself  to  a 
Greek  civilization  it  underwent  serious 
change.  A  day  came  when  belief  on  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  was  understood  to  mean  some- 
thing very  different  from  what  it  had  meant 
to  Paul  and  Silas  and  the  Philippian  jailor. 
To  believe  on  Jesus  was  to  accept  certain 
speculative  opinions  concerning  the  relation- 
ship between  the  Jesus  of  history  and  Deity. 
It  may  be  urged,  no  doubt,  with  considerable 
force  that  the  Logos  idea  was  altogether  the 
most  fitting  medium  through  which  to  bring 
home  to  the  Greek  mind  the  significance  of 
Jesus.  Greeks  could  not  think  of  him  in  con- 
nection with  the  Jewish  term  "Messiah"; 
they  could  think  of  him  in  connection  with  the 
philosophical  term  " Logos."  But  what  we 
are  concerned  to  point  out  here  is  the  shift  in 
119 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

emphasis  from  a  moral  demand  to  an  intel- 
lectual demand.  The  Jesus  of  history  said, 
"If  any  man  would  come  after  me,  let  him 
deny  himself,  and  take  up  a  cross,  and  follow 
me. ' '  And  something  like  that  was  demanded 
of  the  Philippian  jailor  when  he  "believed 
on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.' '  In  a  very  real 
sense  he  took  up  a  cross.  But  a  day  finally 
came  when  belief  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in- 
volved little  more  than  intellectual  assent  to  a 
statement  concerning  him  in  the  official  creed. 

In  this  intellectual  sense  men  have  believed 
on  Jesus.  But  have  they  been  saved?  "When 
a  man  is  pronounced  saved,  it  is  not  imperti- 
nent to  inquire  from  what  he  has  been  saved. 
He  has  been  saved,  perhaps,  from  all  worry 
concerning  his  own  (celestial)  future.  But 
has  he  been  saved  from  all  desire  to  enrich 
himself  in  ways  which  cause  other  people  to 
worry  about  their  (terrestrial)  future?  Has 
he  been  saved  from  greed,  from  lust,  from 
hate,  from  covetousness  ?  In  how  many  cases 
have  men  who  thus  believed  on  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  been  saved  from  nothing  from  which  a 
man  needs  to  be  saved  if  he  is  to  make  any 
contribution  toward  a  better  civilization ! 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  creeds  of 
Christendom  make  no  moral  demands.  It 
would  be  possible,  I  suppose,  to  repeat  the 
120 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

Apostles'  Creed  in  a  way  that  would  be  mor- 
ally meaningful: 

I  believe  in  God  the  Father  Almighty — and 
will  endeavor  to  do  his  will. 

I  believe  in  Jesus  Christ,  his  only  begotten 
Son,  our  Lord — and  earnestly  pray  that  there 
may  be  in  me  that  mind  which  was  also  in 
Christ  Jesus. 

I  believe  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  the  presence 
and  power  of  the  living  God — and  desire  that 
his  Spirit  shall  become  the  directing  force  in 
my  life. 

I  believe  in  the  holy  catholic  Church,  in  the 
possibility  of  a  church  that  is  thoroughly 
Christian  and  all  inclusive — and  will  do  what 
I  can  to  secure  it. 

I  believe  in  the  communion  of  saints,  in  the 
possibility  of  a  Christian  fellowship  which 
shall  raze  all  barriers  of  race  and  nation  and 
color  and  class,  a  fellowship  which  shall  bind 
the  centuries  and  belt  the  world  and  unite  the 
peoples  of  earth  by  a  bond  so  strong  that  not 
even  the  dogs  of  war  can  break  it — and  I  will 
endeavor  through  all  my  life  to  realize  it. 

I  believe  in  the  forgiveness  of  sins — and 
will  grant  unto  others  the  forgiveness  which 
I  myself  require. 

I  believe  in  the  life  everlasting,  the  eternal 
life  of  God  in  man,  full  of  grace  and  truth — 
121 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUKCH  DO 

and  I  will  endeavor  to  live  that  life  here  and 
now. 

It  would  be  possible,  I  think,  to  repeat  the 
Apostles '  Creed  in  a  way  that  would  indicate 
a  desire  and  even  a  determination,  on  the  part 
of  the  person  so  repeating  it,  to  live  a  splen- 
didly Christian  life.  But  in  no  such  fashion 
as  this  were  men  encouraged  to  repeat  it  in 
the  second  century,  in  the  eighth  century,  or 
in  any  succeeding  century. 

The  church  has  called  upon  men  to  believe 
in  certain  dogmas  concerning  Jesus.  It  has  not 
stood  before  men  with  a  mighty  summons  to 
believe  in  Jesus,  in  the  teaching  which  bears 
his  name,  in  the  cause  which  captured  his  al- 
legiance, in  the  God  into  whose  hands,  living 
and  dying,  he  committed  his  case.  And  is  this 
not  the  supreme  heresy  of  history — this  heresy 
of  a  misplaced  emphasis?  If  only  men  had 
caught  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  and  made  their  own 
the  purpose  of  Jesus,  their  theories  as  to  the 
person  of  Jesus  would  have  moved  steadily 
nearer  to  the  truth,  and  the  kingdom  of  God 
would  have  come  in  marvelous  measure.  But, 
since  the  Council  of  Nicea,  the  church  has  in- 
sisted that  it  was  of  supreme  importance  to 
hold  correct  opinions  as  to  the  person  of 
Jesus,  and  (certainly  by  implication)  of  rel- 
atively less  importance  to  catch  the  spirit  and 
122 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

share  the  purpose  of  Jesus ;  and  to-day  we  are 
still  a  long,  long  way  from  that  diviner  civili- 
zation of  which  he  dreamed. 

The  plain  fact  of  the  matter  seems  to  be 
that  many  people  who  believe  what  the  church 
says  about  Jesus  do  not  believe  in  Jesus  very 
much.  Or  perhaps  it  would  be  a  bit  more  just 
to  say  that  they  are  not  sure  whether  they 
believe  in  him.  George  Bernard  Shaw  is 
sponsor  for  the  statement  that  "what  a  man 
really  believes  may  be  ascertained,  not  from 
the  creed  which  he  so  easily  professes,  but 
from  the  assumptions  on  which  he  builds  his 
life. ' '  What  are  the  assumptions  on  which 
most  people  build  their  lives'?  Are  they  like 
those  on  which  Jesus  built  his  life!  That  a 
man  ought  to  go  into  life,  not  to  be  ministered 
unto  but  to  minister;  that  he  ought  to  seek 
first,  not  commercial  success,  nor  political 
success,  nor  ecclesiastical  success,  but  the 
kingdom  of  God ;  that  he  ought  to  return  good 
for  evil,  and  let  his  every  act  be  motived  by 
love — these  are  some  of  the  assumptions,  the 
presuppositions,  of  Jesus.  They  are  the  as- 
sumptions, the  presuppositions  of  how  many 
of  the  people  who  say  with  their  lips,  "I  be- 
lieve in  God,  the  Father  Almighty,  and  in 
Jesus  Christ  his  only  begotten  son,  our 
Lord"?  And  how  many  of  those  who  recite, 
123 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

in  concert,  the  Apostles '  Creed  really  believe 
that  the  principles  of  Jesus  may,  or  should  be, 
applied  to  industrial  and  international  rela- 
tionships? 

During  the  battle  of  Saint  Mihiel  the  author 
drove  into  a  little  French  village  with  a  cam- 
ionette  load  of  supplies.  House  after  house 
had  been  pierced  by  the  shells,  but  what  in- 
terested him  most  was  the  church.  The  walls 
were  still  standing  and  supported  the  roof. 
But  the  interior  of  the  building  was  gutted 
as  by  fire.  The  pews  were  destroyed.  The 
images  around  the  walls  were  destroyed.  The 
altar  was  disfigured  in  a  score  of  places.  Just 
one  piece  of  furnishing  was  left  intact — a  life- 
sized  statue  of  the  Christ  placed  above  the 
door.  Outside  the  door,  but  a  few  feet  away, 
was  a  large  tree  with  a  three-inch  shell  buried 
in  its  heart.  The  shell  was  a  dud.  Had  it 
exploded,  the  whole  front  of  the  church,  in- 
cluding the  one  remaining  statue,  would,  in 
all  probability,  have  been  destroyed.  Is  it 
fancy,  merely,  or  something  more  than  fancy 
that  sees  in  that  gutted  church,  with  its  single 
piece  of  furniture  remaining  intact,  a  strik- 
ing parable  of  what  the  Great  War  has  done 
to  a  so-called  Christian  world?  Christianity 
has  been  stripped  of  its  superficial  furnish- 
ings, its  accretions,  its  nonessentials.  A 
124 


TO  BE  SAVED! 

world  that  called  itself  Christian  is  left  stand- 
ing face  to  face  with  the  Man  of  Nazareth, 
with  neither  image  nor  altar  to  obstruct  the 
view.  And  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives 
thousands  of  people  are  seriously  asking,  Bo 
we  believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ? 

in 

In  a  lecture  delivered  in  Queen's  College, 
London,  just  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war, 
Professor  Cramb  declared  that  in  the  twenti- 
eth century  two  great  spirit  forces  contend 
for  men's  allegiance — Napoleon  and  Christ. 
In  the  spirit  of  Hamlet's  advice  to  his  guilty 
mother,  let  us  look  first  on  this  picture,  and 
then  on  that. 

In  his  memoir  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte, 
Chancellor  Pasquier  says  that  his  great  con- 
temporary never  experienced  any  hatred  or 
any  affection  not  dictated  to  him  by  self-in- 
terest. Napoleon  himself  once  declared  that 
he  was  the  fragment  of  a  rock  launched  into 
space.  A  moment's  reflection  will  show,  I 
think,  that  each  of  these  statements  interprets 
and  confirms  the  other.  Behold  a  man  so  de- 
void of  ordinary  human  feeling,  so  contemp- 
tuous of  his  own  kind,  that  he  refuses  even 
to  hate  when  it  is  not  to  his  interest  to  do  so ; 
a  man  who  thinks  of  himself  as  being  above 
125 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  BO 

morality — the  regulations  of  the  crowd;  a 
veritable  meteor  of  a  man,  destined  by  the 
gods  to  blaze  his  way  across  the  world  and 
leave  behind  him  a  path  of  glory. 

Napoleon  cared  for  men  only  as  they  were 
useful  to  him,  and  only  as  long  as  they  were 
useful  to  him.  He  cared  for  women  only  as 
they  might  serve  the  ends  of  state  or  minister 
to  his  lust.  He  did  not  hesitate  to  violate  a 
treaty,  nor  to  deal  treacherously  with  a  friend. 
In  order  to  cover  up  his  mistakes  he  deliber- 
ately falsified  his  dispatches.  Even  Waterloo 
must  not  be  counted  a  blot  upon  his  military 
career.  So,  with  almost  his  dying  breath,  he 
endeavored  to  fix  the  blame  for  this  tragic  de- 
feat upon  two  of  his  generals,  one  of  whom,  at 
that  very  moment,  was  laboring  in  America 
to  secure  the  release  of  his  former  chief ;  the 
other,  a  brave  and  chivalrous  officer  who  had 
sacrificed  his  life  for  the  man  who  defamed 
him.  In  pursuit  of  his  mad  ambition  to  dom- 
inate Europe,  Napoleon  did  not  scruple  to 
use  up  the  manhood  of  France.  "A  man  like 
me, ' '  he  once  said  to  Metternich,  ' '  cares  very 
little  for  the  loss  of  a  million  men."  He  in- 
vaded Eussia  with  an  army  of  six  hundred 
and  ten  thousand.  When  he  returned  from 
Russia  five  hundred  thousand  of  these  had 
disappeared.  The  armies  with  which  he 
126 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

fought  his  last  battles  were  made  up  of  school 
boys  less  than  twenty  years  of  age.  And 
when  his  long  career  of  bloodshed  had  come 
to  an  end,  it  was  found  that  the  stature  of  the 
average  Frenchman  had  been  reduced  an  inch. 
In  one  of  Saint  Paul's  references  to  the 
Man  of  Nazareth  he  says  that  Jesus  went 
about  doing  good.  Jesus  himself  once  de- 
clared that  he  had  come  into  the  world  not 
to  be  ministered  unto  but  to  minister,  and  to 
give  his  life  as  a  ransom  for  many.  These 
two  statements  also  interpret  and  confirm 
each  other.  Behold  a  man  who  touched  his 
fellow  men  only  to  help  and  heal  and  bless 
them.  He  cared  for  men  even  when  they  were 
not  useful  to  him,  even  when  they  were  saying 
all  manner  of  evil  against  him,  falsely,  and 
seeking  to  destroy  him.  And  he  cared  for 
women  in  a  fashion  so  chivalrous  that  wher- 
ever his  life  and  teaching  have  had  influence 
woman  has  attained  a  new  value,  both  in  her 
own  eyes  and  in  the  eyes  of  men.  His  life 
ended  in  a  tragedy,  but  a  tragedy  which  has 
touched  the  life  of  all  mankind  to  finer  issues. 
Knowing  that  his  teaching  was  unpopular  in 
influential  circles,  he  nevertheless  risked  and 
finally  lost  his  life  in  the  hope  that  those  com- 
ing after  him  might  have  life,  and  have  it 
more  abundantly. 

127 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

Is  it  true  that  in  the  twentieth  century  two 
great  forces  contend  for  men's  allegiance — 
Napoleon  and  Christ?  Well,  we  know  now 
what  Napoleonism  means.  We  know  what 
it  means  in  any  individual  life.  Once  and 
again  we  have  met  some  man  who  had  in  him 
not  the  genius,  perhaps,  but  certainly  the 
spirit  of  Napoleon.  And  we  have  seen  this 
man  riding  roughshod  over  other  men.  We 
have  seen  him  using  other  men  simply  as  the 
instruments  of  his  own  success.  We  know 
also  what  Napoleonism  means  in  industry. 
We  know  that  industrial  Napoleons,  big  and 
little,  capitalist  and  walking  delegate,  are 
largely  responsible  for  the  industrial  unrest 
from  which  the  whole  world  is  suffering.  And 
who  does  not  know  what  Napoleonism  means 
in  international  relationships?  Under  the 
tutelage  of  Napoleonism,  the  end  of  all  and 
be-all  of  the  state  is  power.  The  state  may  do 
anything  it  deems  necessary  to  do  in  order  to 
strengthen  its  power.  It  may  even  bring  on 
war  whenever  war  offers  a  fair  chance  of 
getting  what  the  state  wants  or  thinks  it  re- 
quires. And  in  the  waging  of  war  the  state 
need  not  be  handicapped  by  any  consideration 
of  justice,  or  mercy,  or  honor,  or  good  faith. 
Napoleonism  makes  possible  the  invasion  of 
Belgium,  the  burning  of  Louvain,  the  sinking 
128 


TO  BE  SAVED! 

of  the  Lusitania,  the  dropping  of  bombs  upon 
the  heads  of  women  and  children,  the  unre- 
stricted use  of  the  submarine.  It  makes  pos- 
sible the  continuation  of  a  blockade  against  a 
defeated  enemy  during  eighteen  months  after 
the  signing  of  an  armistice  on  the  basis  of 
the  Fourteen  Points. 

Napoleonism  in  the  social  world  has  given 
us  the  egoistic  individual  using  other  men 
merely  as  the  instruments  of  his  own  profit  or 
pleasure.  Napoleonism  in  the  industrial 
world  has  given  us  the  egoistic  capitalist  and 
labor  leader  recklessly  seeking  personal  ends. 
Napoleonism  in  the  international  world  had 
given  us  the  egoistic  state  threatening  the 
peace  and  freedom  of  mankind. 

"We  know  what  Napoleonism  means.  Do  we 
know  what  Christianity  means?  We  have 
never  seen  Christianity  acting  on  so  large  a 
scale.  And  yet,  I  think,  we  do  know  what  it 
means,  or  would  mean.  There  are  certain 
ideas  and  ideals  which  Christianity  undeni- 
ably represents.  It  insists  that  One  is  our 
Father,  and  that  all  men  are  brothers.  It  has 
regard  for  the  personality  of  every  man, 
however  weak,  or  poor,  or  oppressed,  or  de- 
graded. "What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he 
gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul?" 
When  Jesus  put  that  question  he  placed  the 
129 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUKCH  DO 

value  of  a  human  soul  as  high  as  it  can  be 
placed.  He  declared  that  it  has  infinite  value 
in  the  sight  of  God.  In  one  of  his  Yale  lec- 
tures Silvester  Home  maintained  that  the 
Christian  gospel  is  contained  in  a  single  verse 
of  one  of  the  great  Christian  hymns : 

"Were  the  whole  realm  of  nature  mine, 

That  were  a  present  far  too  small; 
Love  so  amazing,  so  divine, 
Demands  my  soul! — " 

"That  means,"  says  Silvester  Home, 
"that  the  soul  of  every  forced  laborer  on  the 
Amazon  is  of  more  value  than  all  the  mines  of 
Johannesburg,  all  the  diamonds  of  the  Kim- 
berly,  all  the  millions  of  all  the  magnates  of 
America.  It  affirms  that,  in  God's  sight,  all 
the  suns  and  stars  that  people  infinite  space 
are  of  inferior  worth  to  one  human  spirit, 
dwelling  it  may  be  in  the  degraded  body  of 
some  victim  of  drink  or  lust,  some  member  of 
the  gutter  population  of  a  great  city  who  has 
descended  to  his  doom  by  means  of  the  mani- 
fold temptations  with  which  society  environs 
him.,, 

If  that  is  the  teaching  of  Christianity,  who 
can  fail  to  glimpse  what  its  application  would 
mean!  Christianity  would  not  sanction  the 
exploitation  of  the  many  for  the  sake  of  a 
few.  It  would  not  tolerate  the  treatment 
130 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

of  great  classes  of  human  beings  merely  as 
foundation  stones  for  the  erection  of  a  cul- 
ture in  which  only  a  few  are  to  share.  It 
would  sanction  neither  a  selfish  nationalism 
nor  a  blind,  bitter,  unreasoning  racialism.  A 
thoroughgoing  application  of  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  would  mean  the  end  of  oppression,  the 
end  of  jingoism,  the  end  of  race  hatred,  and, 
finally,  the  end  of  war. 

Once  more  in  humanity's  judgment  hall  two 
figures  are  standing — one,  a  man  who  waded 
through  blood  to  a  throne;  the  other,  a  man 
who,  refusing  a  throne,  went  to  a  cross.  And 
once  more  in  humanity's  judgment  hall  the 
question  is  being  put,  "  Which  of  these  twain 
shall  I  release  unto  you?"  Knowing  as  we 
now  know  what  Napoleonism  means,  seeing  as 
we  are  beginning  to  see  what  Christianity 
would  mean  if  given  a  chance,  God  help  us  if 
we  permit  the  Son  of  man  to  be  crucified 
again! 

IV 

Two  of  the  principles  for  which  Christian- 
ity incontestably  stands  demand  special  con- 
sideration. 

1.  The  principle  of  love  versus  hate.  Said 
Jesus,  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said,  Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbor,  and  hate  thine  enemy : 
131 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

but  I  say  unto  you,  Love  your  enemies  .  .  . 
that  ye  may  be  sons  of  your  Father  which  is 
in  heaven:  for  he  maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on 
the  evil  and  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain  on  the 
just  and  the  unjust. ' ,x 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  during  the  Great 
War  hate  increased  with  distance  from  the 
trenches.  The  people  who  hated  most  in- 
tensely were  not  the  combatants,  but  the  non- 
combatants.  One  afternoon,  "somewhere  in 
France/ '  I  had  a  most  interesting  and  illu- 
minating conversation  with  two  French  offi- 
cers. One  of  them  damned  the  Boche  in  every 
sentence.  In  his  opinion,  the  Germans  were 
a  race  of  savages  who  never  had  made,  and 
never  could  make,  any  contribution  to  the 
higher  life  of  the  world.  The  German  lan- 
guage itself  was  an  utterly  barbarous  tongue 
that  could  not  and  should  not  survive.  The 
second  officer  expressed  the  opinion  that  by 
her  contribution  to  the  world's  music  alone 
Germany  had  demonstrated  her  right  to  live ; 
and  he  went  on  to  speak  in  a  hopeful  way  not 
only  of  the  future  of  France,  but  of  the  future 
of  Germany,  the  new,  regenerated  Germany, 
that  would  slowly  but  surely  emerge  from  the 
wreck  and  ruin  of  war.  I  learned  later  that 
this  second  officer  had  been  for  thirty  months, 

*  Matt.  5.  43-45. 

132 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

without  a  break,  in  the  trenches,  under  shell 
fire.  And  when  I  ventured  to  ask  him  whether 
there  were  many  Frenchmen  who  were  able 
to  think  as  objectively  and  dispassionately  as 
he  did,  he  replied,  "Yes,  many;  everyone,  in 
fact,  who  has  suffered. ' '  Said  he, ' '  When  you 
have  lived  for  months  in  a  cold,  damp,  muddy 
trench,  enduring  all  the  torture  of  loneliness 
and  suspense,  and  have  realized  that  opposite 
you,  in  a  similar  trench,  were  other  men, 
your  enemies,  enduring  the  same  hardship, 
the  same  loneliness,  the  same  suspense — men 
who  in  all  probability  were  no  more  respon- 
sible for  the  war  than  you  yourself  were — 
well,  you  could  keep  on  fighting,  but  you  could 
not  keep  on  hating."  And  then,  as  if  in  an- 
swer to  my  own  unspoken  thought,  he  said, 
1 '  Our  friend  who  thinks  that  not  even  the  Ger- 
man language  is  fit  to  survive  has  never  lived 
in  the  trenches;  he  has  always  been  a  staff 
officer,  whose  duties  kept  him  comfortably  in 
the  rear." 

It  is  civilians  who  do  most  of  the  hating 
during  a  war.  And  it  is  civilians  who  do  most 
of  the  peace-making  after  a  war!  Perhaps 
this  is  one  reason  why  the  "peace"  made  at 
Versailles  has  been  cynically,  though  truly, 
described  as  a  peace  which  does,  indeed,  pass 
all  understanding.  It  is  a  "peace"  which 
133 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

contains  the  seeds  of  future  wars.  For  it  has 
a  large  mixture  of  hate  in  it ;  and  hate  breeds 
hate,  revenge  begets  a  desire  for  counter- 
revenge.  To  those  who  refuse  to  show  mercy 
will  no  mercy  be  shown. 

In  his  modern  version  of  "Antony  and 
Cleopatra,' '  George  Bernard  Shaw  makes 
Antony  say  to  the  guilty  queen:  "You  have 
slain  their  leader;  it  is  right  that  they  shall 
slay  you.  And  then  in  the  name  of  that  right 
(he  emphasizes  the  word  with  great  scorn) 
shall  I  not  slay  them  for  murdering  their 
queen,  and  be  slain  in  my  turn  by  their  coun- 
trymen as  an  invader  of  their  fatherland? 
Can  Eome  do  less,  then,  than  slay  these  slay- 
ers too,  to  show  the  world  how  Rome  avenges 
her  sons  and  her  honor?  And  so,  to  the  end 
of  history,  murder  shall  breed  murder,  al- 
ways in  the  name  of  right  and  honor  and 
peace,  until  the  gods  are  tired  of  blood  and 
create  a  race  that  understands. "2  The  notes 
describing  the  action  of  the  play  inform  us 
that  just  here  there  is  fierce  uproar,  in  the 
courtyard,  and  that  Cleopatra  becomes  white 
with  terror. 

If  only  they  could  hear  the  uproar  in  the 
courtyard  of  the  future,  would  not  the  people 

J  George  Bernard  Shaw,  "Caesar  and  Cleopatra,"  used  by  permission  of 
Brentano,  publishers,  New  York. 

134 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

who  are  now  clamoring  for  policies  of  hate 
turn  white  with  terror?  The  Prussians  who 
in  1871  imposed  a  huge  indemnity  upon 
stricken  France,  and  robbed  her  of  those  two 
fair  daughters,  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  thought 
that  by  weakening  France  they  were  secur- 
ing to  themselves,  and  to  their  children,  pros- 
perity and  peace.  To-day,  the  bones  of  their 
sons  are  moldering  in  the  fields  of  Flanders, 
and  on  the  streets  of  Berlin  their  daughters 
are  begging  bread. 

A  decent  and  enduring  civilization  cannot 
be  built  upon  a  foundation  of  hate.  If  we 
really  desire  for  ourselves,  and  for  our  chil- 
dren, a  better  world,  we  must  build  upon  a 
foundation  of  love. 

2.  The  principle  of  service  versus  selfish- 
ness. Said  Jesus, i  'If  any  man  would  be  first, 
he  shall  be  last  of  all,  and  minister  of  all.,,a 

There  was  a  time  when  it  was  seriously  con- 
tended that  selfishness  in  the  individual  is 
beneficial  to  the  community;  that  the  more  a 
man  gets  for  himself,  the  more,  indirectly,  if 
not  directly,  he  enriches  his  community.  And 
this  certain  solemn  professors  still  contended 
even  when  their  attention  was  called  to  the 
fact  that,  in  order  to  get  more  for  themselves, 
some  of  the  cotton  mill  owners  of  England 

» Mark  9.  35. 

135 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

were  employing  little  children  to  work  for 
them,  thirteen  hours  every  day ! 

Now,  we  are  beginning  to  see  the  tragic 
falsity  of  this  gospel  of  enlightened  selfishness. 
Selfishness  in  the  individual,  far  from  being 
beneficial  to  the  community,  is  very  apt  to 
prove  disastrous  to  the  community.  Selfish- 
ness on  the  part  of  capital  means  that  labor 
won't  work;  selfishness  on  the  part  of  labor 
means  that  capital  can't  work.  We  are  dis- 
covering that  we  cannot  turn  the  wheels  of 
production  with  only  selfishness  as  a  motive 
power.  If  a  decent  and  enduring  civilization 
cannot  be  built  upon  a  foundation  of  hate, 
neither  can  it  be  built  upon  a  foundation  of 
selfishness.  A  civilization  that  was  built  upon 
selfishness  is  disintegrating  before  our  eyes, 
and  Europe  is  confronted  with  a  situation 
so  appalling  that  the  imagination  cannot 
grasp  it. 

What  now,  then?  Why,  now,  we  must  try 
to  discover  some  other,  more  powerful  motive 
with  which  to  drive  the  wheels  of  produc- 
tion, and  feed  and  clothe  the  world.  Why 
not  try  the  motive  of  Him  who  came  into  the 
world  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to  minis- 
ter, and  to  give  his  life  as  a  ransom  for  many ! 


136 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

CHAPTEE  VI 

CHBISTIANITY  AND   LIFE 

There  is  something  almost  pathetic  in  the 
eagerness  with  which  people  of  all  kinds  press 
their  lips  to  the  cup  of  life.  Not  a  Living- 
stone only,  exploring  the  undiscovered  se- 
crets of  the  Dark  Continent;  nor  a  Grenfell, 
making  his  rounds  on  the  bleak  Labrador 
coast;  nor  a  Koosevelt,  preaching  and  prac- 
ticing the  gospel  of  strenuosity — not  such  men 
only;  but  the  young  fellow,  also,  who  is  reck- 
lessly generous  with  his  father's  money;  and 
his  elder  brother,  who  is  remaining  unmar- 
ried and  carefully  investing  each  cent;  and 
his  sister,  who  is  learning  to  smoke;  and  his 
mother,  who  is  dabbling  in  politics;  and  his 
father,  who  is  increasing  his  pile;  and  the 
"poor  devil,' '  who  is  trying  to  break  into  the 
class  he  affects  to  despise ;  and  the  thief  and 
the  gambler  and  the  poor,  wretched  creature 
who  is  purchasing  the  cheap  and  awful  sub- 
stitute for  a  good  man's  love — these  all  are 
pressing  their  lips  to  the  cup  of  life.  Some 
are  drinking  wisely;  others,  foolishly.  But, 
save  an  occasional  cynic  here  and  there,  all 
137 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

are  drinking  eagerly;  and  the  man  who  can- 
not view  sympathetically  this  universal  quest 
of  life  must  himself  be  something  less  than 
human. 

"We  have  been  dealing,  in  these  chapters, 
with  some  of  the  intellectual  aspects  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  but  what  the  man  on  the  street  wants 
to  know  about  Christianity  is,  Does  it  make 
for  life?  If  he  should  become  a  Christian, 
would  life  mean  less  or  more,  become  richer 
or  poorer?  And  that  question  is  perfectly 
legitimate.  In  one  of  his  lectures  to  students, 
Professor  Henry  Drummond  used  to  put 
Browning's  question  concerning  Christian- 
ity: Has  it  your  vote  to  be  true?  But  Chris- 
tianity cannot  be  made  true  by  a  majority 
vote.  The  truth  of  Christianity  can  be  ascer- 
tained in  only  one  way — the  test  of  life.  Does 
Christianity  make  for  life? 


Harold  Monro  has  written  a  poem  in 
which  a  certain  unfavorable  impression  of 
Christianity  is  somewhat  skillfully  reflected. 
He  calls  this  poem  ' '  The  Children  of  Love ' ' ; 
and  he  says : 

Suddenly  came 

Running  along  to  him  naked,  with  curly  hair, 

That  rogue  of  the  lovely  world, 

That  other  beautiful  child  whom  the  virgin  Venus  hare. 

138 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

The  holy  boy 

Gazed  with  those  sad  blue  eyes  that  all  men  know. 

Impudent  Cupid  stood 

Panting,  holding  an  arrow  and  pointing  his  bow. 

Will  you  not  play? 

(Jesus,  run  to  him,  run  to  him,  swift  for  joy. 

Is  he  not  holy,  like  you? 

Are  you  afraid  of  his  arrows,  O  beautiful  dreaming  boy?) 


Marvelous  dream! 

Cupid  has  offered  his  arrows  for  Jesus  to  try; 
He  has  offered  his  bow  for  the  game. 
But  Jesus  went  weeping  away,  and  left  him  there  won- 
dering why. 

Notice :  a  beautiful,  dreaming  boy,  with  sad 
blue  eyes,  afraid  of  bows  and  arrows  and 
roguish  though  kindly  companions,  goes 
weeping  away !  This,  apparently,  represents 
Mr.  Monro's  impression  of  Christianity. 
Nor  is  he  alone  in  holding  this  view.  That 
Jesus  was  a  dreamer  of  dreams ;  that  he  pos- 
sessed, undeniably,  a  certain  beauty  and 
charm  of  character,  but  lacked  the  virility 
which  participation  in  the  affairs  of  a  real 
world  requires ;  that  he  is  responsible  for  an 
ideal  of  life  that  is  gloomy,  austere,  and 
other-worldly;  that  his  influence  has  made, 
on  the  whole,  rather  for  sadness  than  for  glad- 
ness— such  is  the  impression  of  Jesus  and  of 
Christianity  in  many  minds.  But  is  this  im- 
pression well  founded? 
139 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

Many  people  have  made  the  mistake  of 
identifying  Christianity  with  some  movement 
which  does  not  fully  or  truly  represent  it. 
They  have  identified  it,  for  instance,  with 
monasticism. 

The  author  visited,  one  summer,  the  Trap- 
pist  Monastery,  at  Gethsemane,  Kentucky. 
There,  on  American  soil,  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, is  a  strange  anachronism.  When  one 
enters  the  door  of  this  monastery  he  goes  back 
^.ve  hundred  years.  A  company  of  ninety 
monks  live  absolutely  apart  from  the  world 
under  the  vows  of  poverty,  chastity,  obedi- 
ence, and  silence.  They  are  divided  into  two 
classes,  lay  and  clerical.  Both  classes  spend 
a  certain  portion  of  the  day  in  hard  labor: 
the  clerical  brothers  five  hours,  the  lay 
brothers  eight  hours.  By  the  former,  five 
additional  hours  each  day  are  spent  in  read- 
ing and  meditation.  Much  time  also  is  spent 
in  prayer.  The  monks  sleep  in  the  long, 
loose  robes  which  they  wear  in  the  daytime, 
removing  only  their  shoes.  They  sleep  on 
mattresses  made  purposely  hard  and  uncom- 
fortable. They  eat  no  meat.  They  eat  no 
eggs,  except  on  Easter  day.  They  drink  milk 
only  from  Easter  till  the  first  of  September. 
They  remain  absolutely  silent  save  when  they 
are  making  a  report  to  some  superior  officer 
140 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

or  conducting  an  occasional  visitor  through 
the  spacious  halls  of  their  monastery.  Why 
are  they  there?  To  escape  the  slings  and 
arrows  of  outrageous  fortune.  To  avoid 
temptation.  To  do  penance.  To  obtain  for- 
giveness. To  save  their  souls.  But  such 
shrinking  from  life,  such  running  away  from 
life,  is  not  Christianity.  Christianity  does 
not  seek  to  save  men  out  of  the  world  or  apart 
from  the  world.  Christianity  places  a  man 
in  some  "  house  by  the  side  of  a  road  where 
the  race  of  men  go  by,"  and  tells  him  that 
he  can  find  salvation  only  in  right  relation- 
ships toward  God  and  his  fellows. 

By  others,  Christianity  has  been  identified 
with  Puritanism.  But  Puritanism  is  not  a 
normal  expression  of  Christianity;  it  repre- 
sents a  reaction.  J.  E.  Green  says : '  •  The  want 
of  poetry,  of  fancy,  in  the  common  Puritan 
temper  condemned  half  the  popular  observ- 
ances of  England  as  superstitions.  It  was  su- 
perstitious to  keep  Christmas,  or  to  deck  the 
house  with  holly  and  ivy.  It  was  superstitious 
to  dance  round  the  village  May-pole.  It  was 
flat  Popery  to  eat  a  mince-pie.  The  rough 
sport,  the  mirth  and  fun  of  '  merry  England/ 
were  out  of  place  in  an  England  called  with 
so  great  a  calling.  Bull-baiting,  bear-baiting, 
horse-racing,  cock-fighting,  the  village  revel, 
141 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

the  dance  under  the  May-pole,  were  put  down 
with  the  same  indiscriminating  severity." 
The  candid  historian  is  obliged  to  admit  that 
once  and  again,  both  in  England  and  in  New 
England,  Puritanism  played  the  regrettable 
role  of  kill- joy.  At  least  some  of  the  images 
that  were  so  ruthlessly  broken  might  have 
been  spared.  At  least  some  of  the  amuse- 
ments that  were  so  sternly  forbidden  might 
have  been  allowed.  Puritanism  is  not  a  nor- 
mal manifestation  of  Christianity,  for  it  rep- 
resents a  reaction,  and,  as  reactions  usually 
do,  it  went  too  far. 

Yet  who  can  deny  that  in  defense  of  Puri- 
tanism much  can  be  said?  After  all,  animal- 
ism is  not  art;  beastliness  is  not  pleasure; 
license  is  not  liberty ;  indecency  is  not  beauty ; 
lust,  however  carefully  disguised,  is  not  love. 
And  the  Puritan  said  so !  The  Puritan  strove 
to  maintain  those  mighty  spiritual  values 
without  which  there  can  be  no  deep  or  abiding 
happiness.  He  endeavored  to  keep  the  soul 
of  man  alive. 

Christianity  protests,  at  times,  but  always 
in  the  name  of  life.  There  are  writers  to-day, 
more  or  less  gifted,  who  are  making  a  plea, 
sometimes  veiled  and  sometimes  open,  for 
"free  love";  for  love,  that  is  to  say,  in  which 
there  is  no  recognition  of  any  obligation  save 
142 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

the  obligation  to  secure  one's  own  happiness. 
And  in  how  many  of  the  musical  comedies, 
drawing  large  houses  night  after  night,  is  the 
sanctity  of  the  marriage  relation  made  light 
of!  Well,  Christianity  protests.  For  Chris- 
tianity believes  that  Jesus  was  speaking  in 
the  interest  of  the  highest  ultimate  human 
happiness  when  he  pleaded  for  the  union  of 
one  man  to  one  woman,  for  better,  for  worse, 
for  richer,  for  poorer,  in  sickness,  and  in 
health,  till  death  do  them  part. 

Compare  the  matrimonial  adventures   of 
some  of  the  so-called  leaders  of  a  decadent 
society  with  the  wedded  life  of  Elizabeth  Bar- 
rett and  Eobert  Browning.    Compare  the  hot, 
feverish,  unwholesome   effusions   of  certain 
present-day  pens  with  this  from  the  pen  of 
Mrs.  Browning: 
"How  do  I  love  thee?    Let  me  count  the  ways: 
I  love  thee  to  the  depth  and  breadth  and  height 
My  soul  can  reach,  when  feeling  out  of  sight 
For  the  ends  of  Being  and  ideal  Grace; 
I  love  thee  to  the  level  of  every  day's 
Most  quiet  need,  by  sun  and  candlelight; 
I  love  thee  freely  as  men  strive  for  Right; 
I  love  thee  purely  as  they  turn  from  Praise; 
I  love  thee  with  the  passion  put  to  use 

In  my  old  griefs,  and  with  my  childhood's  faith; 
I  love  thee  with  a  love  I  seemed  to  lose 

With  my  lost  saints — I  love  thee  with  the  breath 
Smiles,  tears,  of  all  my  life! — and,  if  God  choose, 
I  shall  but  love  thee  better  after  death." 

143 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

Christianity  protests  against  animalism  in 
the  name  of  art.  It  protests  against  indecency 
in  the  name  of  beauty.  It  protests  against  li- 
cense in  the  name  of  liberty.  It  protests 
against  beastliness  in  the  name  of  pleasure. 
It  protests  against  lust  in  the  name  of  love. 
It  protests  against  selfishness  in  the  name  of 
life. 

How  utterly  false  and  ungenerous  those 
bitter  lines  of  Swinburne ! — 

"Thou  hast  conquered,  O  pale  Galilaean. 
The  world  has  grown  gray  with  thy  breath." 

When  did  the  world  grow  gray  with  his 
breath?  Was  it  in  the  fourth  century,  when, 
amid  the  ruins  of  a  brilliant  but  corrupt  civ- 
ilization, Augustine  wrote  his  City  of  God, 
and  helped  to  keep  humanity 's  flickering  faith 
alive  ?  Was  it  in  the  thirteenth  century,  when 
great  Gothic  cathedrals  lifted  the  thoughts  of 
men  heavenward,  and  some  of  the  most  amaz- 
ing poetry  ever  written  was  born  in  Dante's 
soul?  When  did  the  world  grow  gray  with 
the  breath  of  Jesus  ?  Was  it  in  the  eighteenth 
century  when,  in  England,  a  graduate  of  Ox- 
ford University  lifted  a  people  out  of  the  mud 
by  the  lever  of  a  profoundly  Christian  pur- 
pose, and  in  America,  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  gave  birth  to  a  government  of,  and 
144 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

by,  and  for  the  people?  Or  is  it  now  that  the 
world  is  growing  gray  with  his  breath,  in  a 
day  which  is  witnessing  the  birth  pangs  of  a 
new  era?  The  world  has  grown  black  at 
times.  It  grew  black  with  the  breath  of  Nero, 
and  with  the  breath  of  Napoleon,  and,  in  our 
own  time,  with  the  breath  of  the  ruling  classes 
of  Europe.  But  the  breath  of  Jesus,  in  so  far 
as  it  has  touched  the  world,  has  cleansed  the 
world,  and  brightened  the  world,  and  given 
to  the  lives  of  men  whatever  of  beauty  and 
dignity  they  now  possess. 

n 

Christianity  holds  a  cross  before  the  eyes 
of  men.  But  that  cross  is  not  the  symbol  of  a 
drab  and  dreary  asceticism;  it  is  the  symbol 
only  of  the  price  which  must  be  paid  for  any 
rich  and  rewarding  life.  When  Jesus  says, 
"Whosoever  would  save  his  life  shall  lose  it: 
and  whosoever  shall  lose  his  life  for  my  sake 
shall  find  it,"1  he  is  enunciating  the  law  of 
" abundant' '  life. 

This  law  applies  to  man's  physical  life. 
You  have  noticed,  no  doubt,  that  people  who 
are  very  solicitous  about  their  health  usually 
" enjoy' '  poor  health.  Kate  Douglas  Wig- 
gin  makes  one  of  her  characters  remark,  con- 

i  Matt.  16.  25. 

145 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

cerning  a  certain  young  man  who  has  recently- 
passed  away,  "I  guess  he  was  completely 
worn  out  taking  care  of  his  health.' '  There 
are  people  who  never  run  any  physical  risk, 
not  even  in  pursuit  of  their  duty.  They  never 
venture  out  of  doors  when  the  weather  is  in- 
clement. They  are  less  afraid  to  sin  than  to 
sit  in  a  draught.  They  spend  much  of  their 
time  reading  physical  culture  magazines,  and 
making  heroic  efforts  to  follow  instructions. 
They  carefully  regulate  their  eating  and  their 
drinking,  their  lying  down  and  their  getting 
up,  their  going  out  and  their  coming  in — with 
the  result  that  they  are  always  ailing  and 
complaining.  Seeking  too  diligently,  too  con- 
sciously, to  save  their  health,  they  are  losing 
it.  Which  does  not  mean  that  one  should  be- 
come reckless,  and  foolishly  disregard  the 
laws  of  health.  It  does  mean,  I  suppose,  that 
one  ought  to  seek  first,  not  to  save  his  body, 
but  to  do  his  duty,  even  at  some  risk  to  his 
health.  It  may  be  that  the  enthusiasm  en- 
gendered by  a  courageous,  zestful  perform- 
ance of  duty  will  invigorate  his  muscles,  stim- 
ulate his  heart  action,  facilitate  digestion, 
bring  a  ruddy  glow  to  his  cheeks,  and  make 
him  not  only  a  happier  man  but  a  better  man, 
even  physically.  In  the  army,  during  the 
War,  many  a  man  actually  gained  in  weight. 
146 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

(This  is,  of  course,  no  argument  for  war.) 
Just  before  the  War,  in  Dayton,  Ohio,  when 
that  city  was  swept  by  a  flood  of  water  four 
miles  in  width  and,  in  many  places,  twenty 
feet  deep,  I  heard  people  declare  that  never 
before  had  they  enjoyed  such  excellent  health 
— people  who  had  stood  for  hours  in  cold 
water,  knee-deep,  assisting  boats  to  land ;  peo- 
ple who,  in  several  cases,  had  risked  their 
lives,  in  swift  currents,  in  repeated  attempts 
to  save  their  neighbors.  Daring  to  risk  their 
health  for  love's  sake,  they  found  it. 

Jesus  'a  law  applies,  likewise,  to  the  intellec- 
tual life.  At  the  heart  of  all  true  education 
is  a  cross.  A  great  literary  critic  has  defined 
style  as  "the  determined  exclusion  of  what 
is  almost  but  not  quite  right.' '  In  this  deter- 
mined exclusion  of  what  is  almost  but  not 
quite  right,  again  and  again,  one  meets  the 
cross.  Think  of  Eobert  Louis  Stevenson 
writing  his  stories  amid  paroxysms  of  cough- 
ing and  twinges  of  pain — and  then  rewriting 
them  three,  five,  seven,  in  some  cases  as  many 
as  nine  times.  People  sometimes  sigh  and 
say,  "If  only  I  had  time  to  read."  It  would 
greatly  illuminate  the  situation  if  they  should 
say  instead,  "If  only  I  had  the  courage  to 
read."  I  once  loaned  my  copy  of  Les  Mise- 
rables  to  an  elect  lady  who,  I  thought,  would 
147 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

greatly  enjoy  it.  Within  a  very  few  days  she 
returned  the  book  with  the  explanation  that 
for  some  reason  she  could  not  become  inter- 
ested in  it,  and  added,  "You  cannot  pick  it 
up  and  lay  it  down  as  you  can  a  cook-book.' ' 
I  ought,  perhaps,  to  say  that  this  worthy 
woman  had  never  had  the  advantages  of 
academic  training.  But  who  has  not  known 
college-bred  individuals  who  preferred  Ella 
Wheeler  Wilcox  to  Elizabeth  Barrett  Brown- 
ing and  Harold  Bell  Wright  to  William  Make- 
peace Thackeray?  And  when,  in  the  course 
of  an  evening's  conversation,  such  persons 
reveal  the  fact  that  there  are,  indeed,  many 
things  in  heaven  and  earth  which  are  not  in- 
cluded in  their  philosophy,  one  knows  that 
their  ignorance  is  due,  not  to  the  fact  that 
they  have  lacked  time  to  read,  but  only  to  the 
fact  that  they  have  lacked  courage  to  read, 
books  that  are  worth  while.  Whosoever  will 
save  his  mind  all  sweat  and  strain  will  lose 
whatever  of  intellectual  life  he  might  have 
had.  It  is  only  the  man  who  remorselessly 
girds  his  mind  for  an  intellectual  race  who 
has  any  chance  of  winning  the  prize  of  a  rich 
and  rewarding  intellectual  culture. 

And  does  not  Jesus 's  law  apply  with  equal 
certainty  to  man's  social  life?  He  who  deter- 
mines to  "look  out  for  number  one"  discov- 
148 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

ers,  after  a  while,  that  "number  one"  has 
ceased  to  be  interesting,  even  to  himself.  As 
Browning's  Paracelsus  learned  (alas,  too 
late!)  love,  hope,  fear,  faith — these  make  hu- 
manity. But  these  come  only  to  the  man  who 
builds  his  life  into  other  people's  lives  and 
other  people's  lives  into  his  own  life.  Who 
are  the  happy  people,  to  whom  life  appears 
worth  living?  Here  are  some  of  them:  the 
mother  who  risks  her  life  that  her  babe  may 
have  life;  the  father  (on  a  small  salary)  who 
denies  himself  in  a  score  of  ways,  unknown  to 
anyone,  in  order  that  his  wife  and  children 
may  enjoy  a  more  abundant  life;  the  physi- 
cian who  sits  up  all  night  to  save  the  life  of  a 
patient;  the  school-teacher  who  patiently 
goes  over  the  same  lesson  a  dozen  times  in 
order  that  some  boy  or  girl,  not  very  alert, 
may  advance  a  little  farther  into  the  light; 
the  missionary  who  endures  loneliness  and  un- 
congenial surroundings  that  some  backward 
race  may  advance  farther  into  the  light. 
These  know  what  love  is,  what  hope  is,  what 
fear  is,  what  faith  is.  And  these  know  what 
happiness  is! 

m 

It  is  feared  by  many  that  Christianity  is 
impracticable.    And  there  are  certain  inter- 
im 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

pretations  of  Jesus 's  teaching  which  lend  con- 
siderable color  to  this  view. 

Said  Jesus,  "  Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said', 
An  eye  for  an  eye,  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth: 
but  I  say  unto  you,  Resist  not  him  that  is  evil : 
but  whosoever  smiteth  thee  on  the  right  cheek, 
turn  to  him  the  other  also.  And  if  any  man 
would  go  to  law  with  thee,  and  take  away  thy 
coat,  let  him  have  thy  cloak  also.,,a  Tolstoy 
concluded  that  under  no  circumstances  is  a 
Christian  justified  in  using  physical  force. 
And  the  length  to  which  he  went  in  the  main- 
tenance of  this  thesis  is  revealed  in  a  friendly 
criticism  of  the  position  of  the  Rev.  Adin  Bal- 
lou,  himself  a  believer  in  nonresistance.  Tol- 
stoy pronounced  Ballou  * '  one  of  the  chief  ben- 
efactors of  humanity,"  but  declared  that  he 
did  not  go  far  enough.    He  said : 

The  comments  that  I  wish  to  make  on  Mr.  Ballou's 
explanation  of  the  doctrine  [of  nonresistance]  are:  First, 
that  I  cannot  agree  with  the  concession  he  makes  for 
employing  violence  against  drunkards  and  insane  people. 
The  Master  made  no  concessions,  and  we  can  make  none. 
We  must  try,  as  Ballou  puts  it,  to  make  impossible  the 
existence  of  such  people,  but  if  they  do  exist,  we  must 
use  all  possible  means,  and  sacrifice  ourselves,  but  not 
employ  violence.  A  true  Christian  will  always  prefer 
to  be  killed  by  a  madman,  than  to  deprive  him  of  his 
liberty.     Secondly  [I  regret],  that  Mr.  BaUou  does  not 


*  Matt.  5.  38,  39. 

150 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

decide  more  categorically  the  question  of  property;  for 
a  true  Christian  not  only  cannot  claim  any  rights  of 
property,  but  the  term  property  cannot  have  any  signifi- 
cance for  him.  All  that  he  uses,  a  Christian  only  uses 
till  somebody  takes  it  from  him.  He  cannot  defend  his 
property,  so  he  cannot  have  any.  Thirdly,  I  think  that 
for  a  true  Christian  the  term  "government"  cannot  have 
any  signification  or  reality.  Government  is,  for  a  Chris- 
tian, only  regulated  violence;  governments,  states,  na- 
tions, property,  churches — all  these  for  a  true  Christian 
are  only  words  without  meaning;  he  can  understand  the 
meaning  other  people  attach  to  these  words,  but  for  him 
they  have  none.  ...  No  compromise!  The  Christian 
principle  must  be  pursued  to  its  full  extent,  to  enable  it 
to  support  practical  life.  The  saying  of  Christ  that, 
"If  any  man  will  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself 
and  take  up  a  cross  daily  and  follow  me,"  was  true  in 
his  time,  and  is  true  in  ours;  a  follower  of  Christ  must 
be  ready  to  be  poor  and  to  suffer;  if  not,  he  cannot  be 
his  disciple,  and  nonresistance  implies  it  all.8 

George  Kennan  once  reported  to  Tolstoy 
the  case  of  a  delicately  nurtured  girl  who  was 
stripped  of  her  clothing  and  brutally  treated 
by  some  ruffian  soldiers,  and  asked  him  if  in 
such  a  case  it  did  not  become  a  man 's  duty  to 
employ  physical  violence  in  defense  of  an- 
other. Tears  came  into  Tolstoy's  eyes,  but 
he  held  his  ground.  ' '  No, ' '  said  he, '  •  not  even 
in  such  circumstances  would  it  be  right."* 

Said  Jesus,  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  was 


» See  Aylmer  Maude,  The  Life  of  Tolstoi,  vol.  ii,  p.  355.     Dodd,  Mead 
&  Co.,  publishers,  New  York. 
*  See  Nathan  Haskell  Dole,  The  Life  of  Tolstoi,  p.  336n. 

151 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

said,  Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery:  but 
I  say  unto  you  that  every  one  that  looketh  on 
a  woman  to  lust  after  her  hath  committed 
adultery  with  her  already  in  his  heart. ' ,B  And 
at  first,  Tolstoy  contented  himself  with  the 
exhortation:  Do  not  lust.  But  when  The 
Kreutzer  Sonata,  in  which  he  had  dealt  boldly 
with  the  sex  question,  was  cruelly  misunder- 
stood, he  wrote  an  "  Afterword, ' '  in  which 
he  said : 

The  Christian  ideal  is  that  of  love  of  God  and  one's 
fellowman,  .  .  .  whereas  sexual  love,  marriage,  is  a  serv- 
ice of  self,  and  consequently  in  any  case  an  obstacle  to 
the  service  of  God  and  man,  and  therefore,  from  a  Chris- 
tian point  of  view,  a  fall,  a  sin. 

To  get  married  would  not  help  the  service  of  God  and 
man,  though  it  were  done  to  perpetuate  the  human  race. 
For  that  purpose,  instead  of  getting  married  and  produc- 
ing fresh  children,  it  would  be  much  simpler  to  save  and 
rear  those  millions  of  children  who  are  now  perishing 
around  us  for  lack  of  food  for  their  bodies,  not  to  mention 
food  for  their  souls. 

Only  if  he  were  sure  that  all  existing  children  were 
provided  for,  could  a  Christian  enter  upon  marriage  with- 
out being  conscious  of  a  moral  fall.9 

Said  Jesus,  "If  any  man  cometh  unto  me, 
and  hateth  not  his  own  father,  and  mother, 
and  wife,  and  children,  and  brethren,  and  sis- 
ters, yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot  be 

•  Matt.  5.  27,  28. 

•  See  The  Kreutzer  Sonata,  and  "Afterword."  Also  Maude's  Life, 
vol.  ii,  chap.  xi.     Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  publishers,  New  York. 

152 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

my  disciple. ' '7  There  were  times  when  Tol- 
stoy wondered  whether  he  ought  not  to  leave 
his  home,  never  to  return.  He  was  devoted 
to  his  wife  and  children,  and  they  were  de- 
voted to  him.  Indeed,  the  Countess's  pride  in 
her  husband's  genius,  her  untiring  labors  in 
copying  his  manuscripts,  her  daring  venture 
as  the  publisher  of  his  books,  constitute  one 
of  the  most  touching  episodes  in  literary  his- 
tory. But  she  did  not,  could  not,  share  all 
his  views. 

Believing  that  private  ownership  is  wrong 
and  unchristian,  Tolstoy  desired  to  dispose 
of  all  his  property,  and  to  this  she  would  not 
consent.  Then  he  desired  to  transfer  his  for- 
tune to  her,  insisting  that  he  could  not  bear 
the  burden.  Her  reply  was,  "So  you  want 
to  place  it  upon  the  shoulders  of  me,  your 
wife. ' ' 

Another  point  at  issue  was  the  education  of 
their  children.  The  Countess  desired  for 
them  just  such  an  education  as  children  in 
their  station  of  life  were  accustomed  to  re- 
ceive. To  this  Tolstoy  was  bitterly  opposed, 
believing,  as  he  did,  that  the  education  aimed 
at  by  contemporary  society  was  ' l  only  sought 
for  the  sake  of  getting  above  one's  fellows, 
distinguishing  oneself  from  them,  and  sub- 

«  Luke  14.  26. 

153 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

jecting  them  to  oneself.' '  He  desired  his  chil- 
dren to  become  acquainted  with  nature  and 
with  men,  and  to  develop  love  and  compassion 
for  their  neighbors,  but  as  for  the  education 
of  the  schools,  he  would  have  had  none  of  it, 
if  he  could  have  prevented  it. 

Tolstoy,  moreover,  insisted  upon  living  the 
life  of  a  peasant.  He  adopted  the  peasant 
garb — sheepskin  trousers,  coarse,  woolen 
jacket,  high  greased  boots,  sheepskin  cap.  He 
cared  for  his  own  room,  permitting  people  to 
wait  upon  him  as  little  as  possible.  And,  neg- 
lecting his  literary  work,  he  took  to  splitting 
wood,  tilling  the  soil,  and  cobbling  shoes,  in 
the  belief  that  every  man  should  eat  his  bread 
in  the  sweat  of  his  own  brow,  and  not  in  the 
sweat  of  another  man's  brow.* 

The  Countess  began  to  feel  desperate.  On 
one  occasion,  she  said  to  her  brother,  with 
tears  in  her  eyes,  "It  is  hard  for  me  now.  .  .  . 
The  property  and  the  education  of  the  chil- 
dren are  all  on  my  hands.  And  I  am  blamed 
for  attending  to  them  and  not  going  about  as 
a  beggar!  Do  you  think  I  would  not  have 
followed  him,  had  I  not  had  little  children? 
But  he  has  forgotten  everything  for  the  sake 
of  his  teaching. ' ' 

1  Tolstoy  did  not  seem  to  realize  that  productive  toil  may  be  of  the 
head,  and  not  only  of  the  hand. 

154 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

In  view  of  such  differences  of  opinion  as 
these,  a  certain  measure  of  domestic  friction 
was  quite  unavoidable.  Tolstoy  frequently 
quoted  the  saying,  "A  man's  foes  shall  be 
they  of  his  own  household."9  His  family  in- 
sisted upon  living  in  what  he  regarded  as 
wasteful,  selfish  luxury.  He  was  continually 
tormented  by  the  glaring  contrast  between 
his  gospel  of  renunciation  and  his  mode  of 
life.  ' '  You  preach,  but  what  about  practice  f ' ' 
asked  his  critics.  His  reply  was:  "I  do  not 
preach  and  cannot  preach,  though  I  passion- 
ately desire  to  do  so.  I  could  only  preach  by 
deeds :  and  my  deeds  are  bad."  He  was  cob- 
bling his  own  boots  and  making  his  own  bed ; 
but  he  had  a  roof  over  his  head,  and  a  few 
simple  garments  which  he  could  call  his  own ; 
he  even  rode  horseback  at  times — so  his  deeds 
were  bad !  His  conscience  tortured  him ;  and, 
reflecting  upon  those  words  of  Jesus  about 
hating  one's  own  family,  he  seriously  consid- 
ered whether  he  ought  not  to  run  away  from 
such  conditions  of  luxury  as  prevailed  in  his 
own  home. 

At  last  he  did  so.  Accompanied  only  by 
his  faithful  physician,  he  fled  from  the  home 
of  his  ancestors,  never  to  return.  The  jour- 
ney began  in  comparative  comfort.    But  after 

•  Matt.  10.  36. 

155 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

the  first  few  miles,  Tolstoy  concluded  that  he 
ought  not  to  be  riding  first  class,  and  insisted 
upon  entering  a  dirty,  foul-smelling,  third- 
class  coach,  in  which  he  suffered  cruelly  from 
bad  air  and  exposure. 

A  few  days  later,  very  sick,  he  was  carried 
into  the  humble  home  of  a  station  master,  and 
there  he  died. 

I  have  ventured  to  use  Tolstoy  as  an  illus- 
tration of  the  statement,  made  above,  that  cer- 
tain interpretations  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
would  seem  to  support  the  impression  that 
Christianity  is  impracticable.  Having  done  so, 
I  feel  bound  to  add  that,  in  my  judgment,  Tol- 
stoy was  one  of  those  great,  sincere,  heroic 
spirits  who  have  helped  to  open  the  eyes  of 
mankind  to  life's  eternal  realities.  One  may 
not  believe  that  he  always  saw  clearly;  but 
who  will  deny  that  he  earnestly  tried  to  see? 
One  may  not  believe  that  he  always  inter- 
preted rightly  the  mind  of  Jesus ;  but  who  will 
deny  that,  at  least  in  the  later  years,  he  pos- 
sessed in  extraordinary  measure  the  spirit  of 
the  Master?  Tolstoy  must  be  viewed  in  the 
light  of  his  background — the  old  Russia,  its 
horrible  serfdom,  its  political  and  ecclesiasti- 
cal autocracy,  its  blind  censorship,  its  hideous 
punishments  and  persecutions,  its  brutal  and 
repeated  miscarriages  of  justice.  It  is  need- 
156 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

ful  to  remember  what  he  was  moving  from, 
as  well  as  what  he  was  moving  toward.  When 
one  does  consider  him  in  relation  to  his  whole 
environment,  one  can  only  marvel  at  his  great- 
ness, at  what  he  said  and  what  he  did. 

But  there  are,  I  believe,  two  grave  dangers 
which  always  confront  us  when  we  examine 
the  teachings  of  Jesus. 

One  is  the  danger  of  taking  him  too  liter- 
ally. As  Saint  Paul  reminds  us,  "The  letter 
killeth,  but  the  spirit  giveth  life."10  Give  a 
thief  rope  enough,  and  he  will  hang  himself. 
Give  the  literalistic  method  of  interpreting 
the  sayings  of  Jesus  a  thoroughgoing  applica- 
tion, and  it  will  write  as  its  own  epitaph: 
Reductio  ad  dbsurdam.  For,  as  some  one  has 
suggested,  when,  in  answer  to  Peter's  ques- 
tion, "Lord,  how  oft  shall  my  brother  sin 
against  me,  and  I  forgive  him?  until  seven 
times  V  Jesus  replies,  "I  say  not  unto  thee, 
Until  seven  times;  but  until  seventy  times 
seven,' '  the  literalist  must  be  prepared  to  af- 
firm that  he  meant  exactly  four  hundred  and 
ninety  times,  and  that  on  the  four  hundred 
and  ninety-first  offense  forgiveness  ceases  to 
be  a  virtue.  And  when  Jesus  says,  concern- 
ing the  Pharisees,  that  they  "strain  out  the 
gnat  and  swallow  the  camel,' '  once  again  the 

»  2  Cor.  3.  6. 

157 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

literalist  must  screw  his  courage  to  the  stick- 
ing point  and  be  prepared  to  affirm  that,  in 
those  days,  the  pharisaical  throat  was  of  such 
dimensions  that  a  whole  camel  could  be  swal- 
lowed in  one  gulp !  If  only  the  literalist  will 
be  consistent  we  need  not  quarrel  with  him; 
we  need  only  wonder  at  him — and  confidently 
expect  that  before  long  he  will  be  casting 
about  for  a  more  excellent  method  of  inter- 
pretation. 

But  another  danger  which  faces  us  when 
we  come  to  the  teaching  of  Jesus  is  just  the 
opposite  one  that  we  shall  not  take  it  literally 
enough.  In  how  many  cases  have  sayings  of 
Jesus  been  "spiritualized"  to  the  point  of 
emasculation.  In  how  many  cases  have  they 
been  toned  down  until  all  that  was  left  of 
them  was  the  utterly  commonplace  advice  of 
a  commonplace  morality. 

Thus  one  interpreter,  when  he  comes  to 
the  saying,  "Lay  not  up  for  yourselves  treas- 
ures on  the  earth,  where  moth  and  rust  doth 
consume,  and  where  thieves  break  through 
and  steal :  but  lay  up  for  yourselves  treasures 
in  heaven,  where  neither  moth  nor  rust  doth 
consume,  and  where  thieves  do  not  break 
through  nor  steal,""  offers  this  exposition: 

Jesus  did  not  say,  "Lay  not  up  for  yourselves  treas- 

»  Matt.  6.  19,  20. 

158 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

ures  upon  earth."  He  said,  "Lay  not  up  for  yourselves 
treasures  upon  earth  where  moth  and  rust  doth  consume 
and  where  thieves  break,  through  and  steal."  And  no 
sensible  American  does.  Moth  and  rust  do  not  get  at 
Mr.  Rockefeller's  oil  wells,  nor  at  the  Sugar  Trust's 
sugar,  and  thieves  do  not  often  break  through  and  steal 
a  railway  or  an  insurance  company  or  a  savings  bank. 
What  Jesus  condemned  was  hoarding  of  wealth.12 

Is  it  also  true  that  Jesus  does  not  tell  us  to 
lay  up  treasures  [everywhere]  in  heaven,  but 
only  to  lay  up  treasures  in  [those  portions  of] 
heaven  where  neither  moth  nor  rust  doth  con- 
sume, and  where  thieves  do  not  break  through 
nor  steal?  The  interpretation  given  above 
moves  another  reader  of  the  New  Testament 
to  remark  that,  by  the  same  token,  the  Mas- 
ter's saying  concerning  swearing  has  been 
robbed  of  its  sting.  "  Jesus  said,  Neither 
shalt  thou  swear  by  thy  head,  because  thou 
canst  not  make  one  hair  white  or  black.  But 
we  can  now  make  one  hair  white  or  black,  or 
a  combination  of  both.  We  can  make  it  a 
brilliant  peroxide  golden ;  we  could,  if  pushed 
to  an  extreme,  make  it  purple  or  green.  So 
we  are  now  clearly  entitled  to  swear  all  we 
please  by  our  head ! '  ,18 

If  Jesus  merely  meant  to  say,  ' '  Do  not  put 
your  valuables  in  an  old  stocking,  or  under 

12  See  Outlook,  vol.  xciv,  p.  576.     The  paragraph  quoted  hardly  does 
Justice  to  the  spirit  of  the  article  which  should  be  read  in  its  entirety. 
«  Upton  Sinclair,  The  Profits  of  Religion,  p.  177. 

159 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

your  pillow,  but  take  them  to  the  bank,  or, 
better  still,  invest  them  in  some  kind  of  non- 
taxable stock,  guaranteed  at  seven  per  cent" 
— if  that  is  all  Jesus  meant  to  say,  where  shall 
we  look  for  an  example  of  the  extraordinary 
ethical  and  spiritual  insight  which  he  is 
claimed  to  possess !    Certainly,  not  here ! 

We  are  confronted,  then,  by  a  two-fold  dan- 
ger in  relation  to  Jesus:  the  danger  that  we 
shall  take  him  too  literally,  and  the  danger 
that  we  shall  not  take  him  literally  enough. 
By  the  methods  of  a  bald  literalism,  he  may 
be  made  to  appear  foolish  and  impracticable. 
By  the  methods  of  an  ingenious  spiritualiza- 
tion,  he  may  be  made  to  appear  so  ' '  safe  and 
sane ' '  that  he  ceases  to  be  in  any  great  sense 
a  leader  of  mankind. 

IV 

What  especially  concerns  us  about  Jesus  is 
his  point  of  view.  Interpreters  will  continue 
to  differ  as  to  the  exact  meaning  of  specific 
statements ;  but  can  they  conscientiously  dif- 
fer as  to  his  general  point  of  view?  Jesus 
declared  that  God  is  Father  and  that  men  are 
brothers.  He  held  that  human  life  is  infinitely 
sacred.  He  attached  far  more  importance  to 
human  values  than  he  did  to  property  values. 
In  his  eyes  the  whole  material  world  was  but 
160 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

an  instrument,  a  means  to  an  end ;  man,  how- 
ever, was  not  merely  an  instrument,  but  an 
end  in  himself.  Such,  indisputably,  was 
Jesus  's  point  of  view.  Is  it  an  impracticable 
one?  Would  life  mean  less  or  more,  become 
poorer  or  richer  if  this  point  of  view  were  to 
prevail  ? 

Christianity  insists  that  no  woman  is 
merely  an  instrument.  She  is  a  daughter  of 
God,  and  in  God's  sight  has  priceless  value. 
If  only  the  world  believed  that!  How  long 
would  any  city  tolerate  a  vice  district?  How 
long  would  any  man  consent  to  treat  as  a 
mere  thing  one  who,  in  the  eyes  of  God,  is  in- 
finitely sacred? 

Christianity  insists  that  no  man  is  merely 
an  instrument.  If  only  the  world  believed 
that!  To  many  an  employee  an  employer  is 
not  a  person;  he  is  merely  an  institution,  a 
fleshless,  boneless,  bloodless  something  that 
pays  wages  and  receives  dividends.  And  to 
many  an  employer  an  employee  is  not  a  per- 
son (a  father,  perchance,  who  objects  to  a 
twelve-hour  day  because  he  wants  to  spend 
some  time  with  his  children)  but  only  a  part 
of  a  plant,  a  bit  of  human  machinery,  a  means 
of  production.  As  industries  have  grown 
from  more  to  more,  men  have  shrunk  from 
less  to  less.  Furnishers  of  capital  have  suf- 
161 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHURCH  DO 

fered  a  loss  of  personality  in  huge  corpora- 
tions. Furnishers  of  labor  have  suffered  an 
even  more  terrible  loss  of  personality  in  huge 
mills  and  mines  and  factories.  What  the 
world  to-day  imperatively  needs  is  some  form 
of  industrial  democracy  in  which  personality 
may  be  recovered.  If  all  who  labor,  whether 
with  head  or  with  hand,  could  participate  in 
the  management  of  the  industry  which  imme- 
diately and  vitally  concerns  them,  would  not 
personality  find  opportunity  for  develop- 
ment! Would  not  men  view  one  another 
through  the  eyes  of  a  new  respect?  Would 
they  not  feel  toward  one  another  a  new  sense 
of  obligation?  And  would  not  peace  eventu- 
ally come  to  the  industrial  world  ?" 

Christianity  says  that  no  child  is  merely  an 
instrument.  If  only  the  world  believed  that! 
Child  labor  would  be  done  away;  and  not 
only  child  labor,  but  irreverent  educational 
systems.  In  how  many  schools  of  this  pres- 
ent time  are  subjects  taught,  not  with  a  view 
to  helping  a  child  develop  into  a  man,  but, 
rather,  with  a  view  to  forcing  a  child  to  de- 

w  Within  the  limits  of  a  lecture  such  as  this,  one  can  only  hint  at  cer- 
tain developments  in  industry  the  need  for  which  could  be  adequately 
stated  in  nothing  short  of  a  volume.  For  the  recovery  of  personality  there 
is  needed  also  such  reorganization  of  industrial  processes  as  will  enable 
each  worker  to  satisfy  his  creative  instinct.  Nothing  could  be  more 
brutalizing  than  the  extreme  specialization  which  now  prevails  in  some 
industries. 

162 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

velop  into  a  party-man.  Education  in  this 
case  is  not  a  drawing  out,  but  a  putting  in — 
a  kind  of  forcible,  intellectual  feeding  proc- 
ess in  which  the  child  is  made  to  take  what- 
ever his  elders  think  he  ought  to  take,  regard- 
less of  any  possible  violation  of  his  own 
personality. 

Absolute  freedom  of  thought  could  not  be 
granted  to  any  child  without  too  great  risk. 
But  absolute  control  of  thought  would  involve 
an  even  greater  risk,  not  only  to  the  child, 
himself,  but  to  his  own  and  to  all  succeeding 
generations.  For  a  generation  would  grow 
up  thinking  only  what  men  before  them  had 
thought,  and  that  would  mean  that  the  path 
of  progress  had  come  to  an  end  in  a  blind 
alley.  If  we  are  to  treat  a  child  as  a  person, 
and  not  merely  as  a  thing,  we  must  educate 
him  in  the  sense  of  drawing  out  the  full  con- 
tribution which  he  may  make  to  the  worlds 
faith  and  hope  and  achievement,  and  not  in 
the  sense  of  merely  putting  into  him  such 
ideas  as  will  cause  him  to  perpetuate  what  we 
may  choose  to  regard  as  a  desirable  civili- 
zation. 

What  Christianity  says  of  any  man  it  says 

of  all  men.     For  Christianity  regards  each 

man,  not  as  a  member  of  some  particular  race 

or  nation,  but  as  a  member  of  the  human  fam- 

163 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO 

ily  to  whom  God  is  Father.  It  holds  that  a 
man  is  sacred  in  the  eyes  of  God,  not  in  virtue 
of  the  fact  that  he  is  a  white  man,  or  an  Eng- 
lishman, but  just  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that  he 
is  a  man.  If  only  the  world  believed  that! 
How  long  would  war  last?  How  long  would 
lynchings  continue  to  take  place! 

Because  an  Englishman  says  "been"  in- 
stead of  "bin";  because  he  says  "either"  in- 
stead of  "eether,"  and  "neither"  instead  of 
"neether";  because  he  possesses  a  certain 
reserve  which  easily  passes  for  hauteur,  and 
lacks,  ofttimes,  a  sense  of  humor,  many  Amer- 
icans can  see  no  beauty  in  the  Englishman 
that  God,  or  anyone  else,  should  desire  him. 
And  behold  how  vast  a  prejudice  a  little  pig- 
ment causes !  His  skin  is  black ;  his  lips  are 
thick;  his  nose  is  flat.  And  so,  many  of  us, 
whose  skins  are  white,  fail  to  appreciate  his 
elemental  good-nature,  his  capacity  for  laugh- 
ter, his  gift  of  music.  Lord  God  of  all  races, 
all  nations,  open  our  eyes!  "If  the  whole 
body  were  an  eye,  where  were  the  hearing! 
If  the  whole  were  hearing,  where  were  the 
smelling?  But  now  hath  God  set  the  members 
each  one  of  them  in  the  body,  even  as  it 
pleased  him.1"  And  the  American  cannot  say 
to  the  Englishman,  'I  have  no  need  of  thee.' 

m  J  Cor.  12.  17. 

m 


TO  BE  SAVED? 

The  white  man  cannot  say  to  the  black  man, 
'I  have  no  need  of  thee.'  "  The  tenacity  that 
is  Britain,  the  beauty  that  is  France,  the  thor- 
oughness that  is  Germany,  the  practical  ideal- 
ism that  is  America,  the  spirituality  that  is 
Korea,  the  courage  that  is  Japan,  the  haunt- 
ing sense  of  the  infinite  that  is  India — all  are 
needed  by  a  struggling  humanity  in  its  mag- 
nificent adventure. 


Christianity  makes  its  supreme  contribu- 
tion to  human  life  by  developing  in  men  i '  the 
heaven-regarding  eye."  By  " heaven,' '  in 
this  case,  one  means  something  vastly  more 
than  the  heaven  of  any  childish  imagination, 
" above  the  deep,  blue  sky."  One  means  all 
the  reality  and  greatness  and  grandeur  of  the 
spiritual  world. 

Many  a  modern  man  is  going  about  like 
Wordsworth's  Cumberland  Beggar,  with  his 
eyes  upon  the  ground ;  and  evermore, 

"Instead  of  common  and  habitual  sight 
Of  fields  with  rural  works,  of  hill  and  dale, 
And  the  blue  sky,  one  little  patch  of  earth 
Is  all  his  prospect." 

If  not  one  little  patch  of  earth,  one  little 
office,  it  may  be — some  little  place  of  mun- 
dane interest.    He  lacks  "the  heaven-regard- 
iC5 


WHAT  MUST  THE  CHUECH  DO? 

ing  eye, ' '  and  his  life  is  immeasurably  poorer 
in  consequence. 

Tennyson  and  Carlyle  were  once  looking  at 
two  busts,  one  of  Goethe  and  one  of  Dante. 
"What  is  there  in  Dante's  face  which  one 
misses  in  Goethe  'si"  asked  Tennyson.  With- 
out a  moment's  hesitation,  Carlyle  replied, 
"God!"  Here  he  comes — a  successful  busi- 
ness man,  a  distinguished  professional  man, 
or,  it  may  be,  a  prominent  ecclesiastic.  But 
in  how  many  cases  does  one  instinctively  feel 
that  he  is  mostly  of  the  earth,  earthly !  There 
is  so  little  of  God  in  his  face !  And  the  man 
who  has  little  of  God  in  his  face  has  little  of 
real  joy  in  his  life.  Surely  Carlyle  is  speak- 
ing words  of  truth  and  soberness  when  he 
declares  that  "man's  unhappiness  comes  of 
his  greatness ;  it  is  because  there  is  an  infinite 
in  him  which,  with  all  his  cunning,  he  cannot 
quite  bury  under  the  finite."1* 

Our  greatest  need,  undeniably,  is  the  need 
of  God.  And  Christianity  meets  this  need  in 
a  two-fold  way.  It  gives  men  a  conception  of 
God  that  is  intellectually  satisfying  and  mor- 
ally uplifting.  And  to  those  who  keep  spirit- 
ual company  with  Jesus  Christ,  it  brings  a 
lively  sense  of  God's  reality,  a  blessed  experi- 
ence of  his  presence. 

16  In  Sartor  Resartus,  The  Everlasting  Yea. 

166 


